Xiotech Automates SAN Failure and Redundancy Testing
Xiotech's innovative approach to storage networking has enabled a new chapter to be written in the test handbook. The company provides on-the-fly, simplified storage configuration and management. Xiotech selected the APCON IntellaPatch to help ensure their promise that their storage solutions would deliver the uptime required by today's businesses.
The Challenge
Xiotech is recognized for its ability to incorporate ease of use into its cost-effective storage solutions. Their products deliver flexible scale and resilience against both planned and unplanned downtime. To ensure this high level of resilience, the company tests its products extensively to ensure that data is not lost or corrupted, even in the event of hardware failure. Xiotech accomplishes this through a rigorous test process that simulates intermittent and difficult to replicate problems such as faulty cables, damaged connectors, and SFP failures. Test scenarios must simulate problems that could occur in time frames ranging from seconds to years.
The Solution
The company added the APCON IntellaPatch into their test bed to connect and disconnect various combinations of hosts, storage targets, and fabric switches. To mimic catastrophic, real-world failures, Xiotech uses a proprietary application to pull from one to many cables simultaneously. Without the IntellaPatch, problems such as double cable pulls could not have been synchronized using manual techniques. The test process models immediate catastrophic failures, as well as difficult-to-replicate scenarios that could occur over long time periods. Xiotech uses the Intellapatch so simulate and test their product as though it has been deployed for many years. But Xiotech completes the testing in only a few hours.
The Benefits
Adding the IntellaPatch into the test bed enabled Xiotech to develop an efficient, reliable method to test thousands of failures without damaging cables or introducing unintended errors. The test environment gave the company a way to create extreme test scenarios that ensure its product meets reliability, robustness, performance, and ease-of-use parameters that extend beyond normal operating conditions. Using the IntellaPatch, Xiotech was also able to reduce capital equipment costs by purchasing only one switch to support testing across multiple stages of their test topology.
Most important, performance problems or failure that would not have been detected could be addressed in the test lab, before customers received their products, thus reinforcing Xiotech position as a leader in easy-to-use, cost-effective, reliable storage solutions.
|
