Spirent Launches Industry’s First Standards-based NFV Cloud Test Platform

Spirent Communications, the world-leading carrier network and SDN/NFV testing solution provider, today announced the release of Spirent CloudSure, the world’s first commercially-available test solution for assuring NFV performance as specified in ETSI GS NFV-TST 001. Spirent CloudSure is designed to benchmark and validate performance and allow service providers to confidently rollout NFV deployments and reap the benefits of service flexibility and agility, without sacrificing performance.

NFV is a complex and difficult set of technologies to navigate, with deployment of network functions virtualization infrastructure (NFVi) and the functionality of virtual network functions (VNFs) providing many challenges. Spirent CloudSure delivers value in the form of test packages, consisting of a set of templates that can be easily configured and customized to match service providers’ unique NFV deployments. Configuration is possible via both a graphical user interface (GUI) and an application programming interface (API) for automation users, with Spirent TestCenter Virtual ports and Spirent CloudStress agents generating realistic, multi-dimensional workloads to assess cloud performance.

“Spirent CloudSure takes a new approach to measuring performance of virtualized infrastructure, with a test framework which addresses operators’ key NFV concerns,” said Abhitesh Kastuar, General Manager of Spirent’s Cloud and IP business. “Focused on benchmarking and validating NFV ecosystems in line with ETSI GS NFV-TST 001, Spirent CloudSure is a uniquely flexible and adaptable framework which can also address other cloud testing challenges, such as comparing cloud performance, cloud workload migration, and capacity planning.”

Cloud testing typically generates hundreds of metrics, making it challenging for users to find the most relevant statistics to pinpoint problem areas and gain visibility into performance bottlenecks. Making use of Spirent TestCenter IQ, CloudSure provides enhanced troubleshooting and reporting to allow users to quickly manipulate results, sort and filter data, and easily drill-down to identify problems.

“By helping to understand NFV and cloud infrastructure performance and gain actionable insights into poor performance, CloudSure enables service providers to deliver expected QoE (quality of experience) to end users and assure successful NFV deployments,” said Kastuar.