Load DynamiX Streamlines Performance Validation Solution for OpenStack and SDS Systems

Load DynamiX, Inc. announced its software platform release, offering broader support for OpenStack and other emerging storage technolgies.

The enhanced product suite simplifies and accelerates the performance validation of today’s distributed and virtualised environments deployed with any file, block or object-based cloud storage system.

Simplified modelling, broader protocol support
Load DynamiX streamlines the workload modelling process to give storage engineers and architects a deeper insight into how their evolving storage infrastructure will perform in production. The release will offer:

• ‘Out of the box’ workload models that support NFSv4.1, CEPH, Amazon S3, and OpenStack Swift.

• A steady-state VDI workload model to complement the ‘boot storm’ workload model introduced last year.

• Support for the OpenStack Cinder block storage protocol. By adding Cinder support, Load DynamiX supports both primary OpenStack storage protocols, Swift and Cinder. Support for the Manila file-based protocol will be added once it is finalised by the OpenStack community, resulting in the industry’s most comprehensive OpenStack storage performance testing platform.

• Support for the FCoE converged infrastructure protocol.

With this release, users are empowered to test storage infrastructure performance over a broader range of workload scenarios across block, file, and object-based cloud storage systems.

Understanding the I/O profile and modelling of applications is one of the most challenging and complex tasks in the life of a storage engineer. With the release of the Composite Workload Editor facility in Load DynamiX Enterprise, the creation of multi-threaded I/O patterns – across multi-tiered storage infrastructure and access protocols – is simplified and accelerated. With the Composite Workload Editor multiple workloads can be run simultaneously, representing different parts of an enterprise application or different virtualised applications. Storage engineers can rapidly create more realistic workloads that better represent application-specific scenarios.

“Until Load DynamiX, storage architects and engineers could only rely on freeware and time-consuming in-house scripting to understand the performance impact of new storage technologies,” said Tim Van Ash, VP, product management, Load DynamiX. “With our latest release, we have simplified the workload modelling process and expanded our capabilities for helping users evaluate software defined storage technologies like OpenStack and CEPH.“

“Load DynamiX is squarely focused on the needs of storage engineers and architects,” said George Crump, chief steward and founder, Storage Switzerland. “With their impressive insight into storage system behaviour, they are rapidly becoming the key enabler to the intelligent adoption of next generation storage deployments for Global 2000 IT organisations across file, block and now object storage.”

The release of the Load DynamiX appliance operating environment (version 4.0) and Load DynamiX Enterprise (version 2.6) is scheduled to be available for download from the company’s support site on June 15, 2015.