finisar

Solutions

Xgig® 10GbE/FC/FCoE Analyzer

Finisar’s Xgig® 10GbE and Fibre Channel Analyzer is a versatile, state-of-art solution for monitoring and analyzing live traffic of different storage protocols, including 10G Fibre Channel, 10GbE, iSCSI, FCIP, iFCP and iWARP.

Xgig provides accelerated resolution of network impairments as well as an extensive range of capabilities to proactively prevent performance impairments before they escalate to loss of access to mission-critical applications and data. With the ability to capture 100% of traffic at full line rate, triggering enabled across all protocol layers and anywhere within the layered frames, and extensive automated post-capture Expert analysis, Xgig gives users the deep visibility they need into the design and testing applications as well as monitoring network performance and reliability.

The implementation of FCoE provides guarantee of packet delivery using the PAUSE command and overcomes the deficiencies of standard Ethernet products which drop frames in overloaded conditions. The FCoE initiative promises to enable cost-savings via consolidated connectivity and management within the server clusters. As a long-standing member of the ANSI T11 committee, Finisar has supported members’ proposals for the initiative on the Xgig platform. The latest release of Xgig supports the recently ratified frame format.

Data Sheet: Xgig 10G Ethernet and Fibre Channel Analyzer

Data Sheet: Xgig FCoE Testing Solutions

Test Services

Medusa Labs offers an array of services specifically designed for various product maturity levels. Whether your product is still in the alpha and beta phases or ready to ship, we have a service that is suited for you.

Medusa Labs is the premier outsource testing facility for servers, host bus adapters, switches, and storage. Medusa Labs engineers are dedicated to helping our customers develop better products and uncovering critical issues prior to product release. Our engineers will provide the highest quality testing services for all of your enterprise testing needs. One of the key defining features of Medusa Labs is the ability to provide full issue analysis and regression. Medusa Labs uses protocol analyzers in all of their testing configurations.

Medusa Labs specializes in:

Servers

  • X86 based servers
  • IA 32
  • IA 64/EM64T

Host Bus Adapters

  • Fibre Channel - 1, 2, 4Gb
  • Ethernet
  • SCSI and SCSI RAID
  • SATA
  • SAS

Switches

  • Fibre Channel - 1, 2, 4, 10Gb
  • iSCSI
  • Ethernet

Storage

  • Fibre Channel - 1, 2, 4 Gb
  • iSCSI
  • Ethernet
  • SCSI/SCSI RAID
  • SATA
  • SAS
  • Solutions - Cluster, SAN, NAS

Operating Systems

  • Microsoft
  • Linux - Red Hat, SuSE
  • Netware
  • Solaris
  • SCO Unix

Each of our service offerings is unique in that they are custom tailored to your product or configuration. You can either request that we run specific services, or we will perform an initial evaluation on your product or configuration which will allow us to assess the maturity level and provide you with a suggested path for testing.

Finding the issues is merely the beginning of our relationship. Once we have identified the problems we then assist the customer with full analysis, debug, and regression. This means that we analyze each and every issue, generally reducing the time for recreation from days to hours or hours to minutes, provide you with every detail about the issue and recreation, assist you in further debug if necessary, and then provide full regression of all fixes.

Data Sheet: Testing Services for Mission Critical Products and Solutions
Data Sheet: Medusa Labs Testing

Medusa Labs Test Tools Suite

With over 10 years’ experience in Fibre Channel SAN testing and validation, Finisar’s Medusa labs brings its years of hands-on expertise and knowledge in the test and validation arena and puts it directly into this test suite. Finisar’s Medusa Labs Test Tool Suite is a series of benchmark speed, data integrity and stress test tools that allow test and validation engineers to better develop quality products in a shorter time frame, for faster time to market. The suite was designed specifically for engineers that work with DVT, validation, bring-up, design validation and Quality Assurance.

Medusa Labs realized early on that there were no industry software test tools that met its stringent testing requirements. Currently, most of the industry is using shareware benchmarks or ineffective I/O generating tools that are not capable of identifying the vast majority of bugs on most products. Finisar’s Medusa Labs Test Tool Suite was specifically designed to find elusive data corruptions, I/O timeouts, I/O loss, and system lockup scenarios. The tools are very rich in debug and logging information to allow for rapid analysis of any found issues. They are designed to stress hardware and signal integrity and are also portable to all of the major operating systems so that familiarity on one platform leads to familiarity on all others.

Product Features

  • Bit for Bit Data Integrity Checking at Benchmark speeds
  • Provides Wealth of Data Patterns Designed to Find Weaknesses in Hardware (Signal Integrity)
  • Ability to Automatically Trigger a Protocol Analyzer for Root Cause Analysis when Anomalies are Discovered
  • Complete I/O Control (Queue Depth, I/O size, File Size, I/O Direction)

How the Test Tools Work
Medusa Labs test tools are user-mode command-line applications that run on a host system. At the simplest level, our test tools operate in an initiator-target fashion. The host system acts as an initiator and the target can be any storage device internal or external to the host system. With our test tools, the host system becomes a precision traffic generator using real-world application data. Because the tools are command-line based, they are ideal for setting up scripted test runs.

Test Tools Diagram

I/O Tools
Pain and Maim are the currently available I/O test tools in the Test Tools Suite. Pain is a synchronous I/O tool that is designed to issue a single pending I/O per worker thread. Maim is an asynchronous I/O tool that uses a single worker thread to issue multiple I/Os at once.

The Use of Finisar Protocol Analyzers
While Medusa Labs Test Tools are designed to report conditions as accurately as possible from the application level, we cannot overemphasize the importance of using in-line protocol analyzers such or traffic monitors whenever possible. In our experience, a substantial number of defects or deficiencies are overlooked in product development due to anomalies that are not readily visible at the application level. An analyzer is essential to detecting underlying items of interest.

 Read how Microsoft IT recovers damaged exchange databases with the help of Medusa Labs Test Tools.

Data Sheet: Medusa Labs Test Tools Suite 2.0

Training: ML245 Fibre Channel over Ethernet

Course Objective
Click here for detailed description
Students develop a working knowledge of the newly emerging FCoE architecture and behavior through lecture and protocol analysis exercises.

Course Outline

  • Introduction to FCoE
  • Ethernet Review
  • Fibre Channel Review
  • FC-BB-E Brocade et al’s Approach to FCoE Architecture
  • FCoE Cisco et al’s Approach to FCoE Architecture
  • FC-BB-5 (T-11 Draft) Approach to FCoE Architecture

Analyzer Experience
Interspersed with the lecture sections, student’s analyze FCoE traces using the latest Finisar Xgig® Trace Viewer and Expert products.

Prerequisites
A working understanding of Fibre Channel Framing and Fibre Channel Fabric concepts is required.