FC Protocol Testing Solution

The Load DynamiX Fibre Channel test and validation platform includes a full-featured FC initiator, which is essential for system level validation of block level storage as well as storage networking environments.

The solution has the ability to drive FC traffic at line rate on every port at 16/8/4G speeds. FC protocol support includes connectivity either directly to FC targets, as well as to FC SAN switches. Targets are automatically discovered and presented to the user.

A rich suite of SCSI commands is presented for detailed system level testing. This suite covers the entire set of mandatory SCSI commands for disk. Commands specified to the user are injected directly at the SCSI layer, ensuring unparalleled performance, repeatability and scalability.

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Figure: An example FC Client (Initiator) Scenario that will verify the latest content stored after a Compare and Write operation.

Fibre Channel Transport

  • FC switch connectivity support (FC-SW)
  • FC direct and loop target connectivity support (FC-P2P and FC-AL)
  • NPIV for up to 250 logins/port
  • Packet capture and decode, reporting, graphing and statistics

SCSI Commands

  • Fine grain control over data traffic at the SCSI level
  • No OS or other optimizations ensures that exact SCSI workloads can be replicated
  • Comprehensive command set for SCSI Primary Commands (SPC), SCSI Block Commands (SBC) and SCSI Streaming Commands (SSC)
  • Direct transmission from SCSI layer (no OS interference)
  • Detailed SCSI graphs and statistics

Data Integrity

  • Data verification support that validates the integrity of data written to LUNs
  • Per initiator, target LUN, offset and byte level error reporting