CloudStorm 25GE Application and Security Test Load Module

Cloud-Scale Application Delivery &  Network Security Test Platform

Problem: An All-Encrypted World and Increasing User Experience Expectations

Massive concerns around security are driving an increased use of encryption. An all-encrypted world is not far away. At the same time, the scale of traffic continues to grow at an exponential rate and the industry is moving to new cloud-based architectures. Users of services and applications, however, continue to expect their experience to be at or above the current level.

To keep pace, network equipment manufacturers race to build higher-scale, more capable network security and application delivery solutions.  In turn, the world’s largest cloud data center operators struggle to find the right balance between performance and security in today’s hyper-scale, dynamic world. The uncertainty that comes with this change is best mitigated through cloud-scale validation.

Solution: Unified, Cloud-Scale, FutureProof Testing

Ixia’s CloudStormTM is an industry-first 2.4 terabit application and security test solution that not only meets today’s need, but that of the future. CloudStorm delivers 3X-application and 4X-SSL-emulation scale over any other test system. It helps NEMs shortening their development cycles, and enterprises and data center operators find the right balance between mitigating security risks and delivering high end-user  application performance.

Each CloudStorm load module supports two native QSFP28 100GE interfaces with an innovative architecture that allows concurrent emulation of complex applications, unprecedented SSL encrypted applications, and a large volume of DDoS traffic to validate your network infrastructure is high performing and secure. CloudStorm is the industry first solution to break the SSL and DDoS test barriers, achieving over 960Gbps of traffic with strong encryption and ciphers or 2.4 terabit DDoS throughput in a single chassis. CloudStorm is driven by Ixia’s BreakingPoint and IxLoad applications—industry-leading test solutions for application delivery and security resiliency testing.

Highlights

• Massive-scale under realistic traffic conditions, CloudStorm is the first multi-terabit solution — 2.5 – 3X application performance 

• Hardware-based SSL acceleration delivers 4X  encryption performance

• Emulate multi-terabit DDoS and botnet attacks to futureproof security solutions

• Unified application and security test platform, with  Layers 2-7 capabilities and support for BreakingPoint  and IxLoad software

• Multi-rate ready: future-proof your investment with CloudStorm; capable of supporting 100/50/40/25/10GE on a single port

• Multi-user environment leverages the per-port user ownership model for all ports on the test modules installed into the chassis

Product Capabilities 

CloudStorm provides cloud-grade L4-7 application performance with fully integrated L2/3 stateless traffic support, for exercising the systems under test in real world conditions, helping the customers to easily identify the performance and interoperability issues. The modular architecture of the solution allows linear performance scaling to multi terabit, by populating an Ixia’s XGS12-HSL chassis with multiple CloudStorm load modules—up to 12.

CloudStorm breaks the SSL and IPsec speed test barriers, with its capability to benchmark 960Gbps  of encrypted traffic from a single fully populated XGS12 chassis. Powered by encryption hardware offload, CloudStorm enables data center operators to find the right balance between security and enduser quality of experience as traffic is moving toward total encryption, with HTTP/2, 2/4k keys and ECC ciphers are adopted.

The proliferation of IoT poses new security risks, as highjacked IoT devices can easily be used to generate ground-breaking DDoS attacks. Also, network infrastructures need to be able to support billions of concurrent connections to service these IoT devices. CloudStorm allows future-proof validation of cloud data center infrastructure and DDoS mitigation devices by simulating IoT device behavior under a deluge of legitimate IoT and botnet traffic. With the capacity to generate 1.4 billion concurrent sessions and 2.4 Terabits of DDoS traffic from a fully populated chassis, CloudStorm allows organizations to assess their mitigation solutions, as well as people and process.