SwiftTest and Tolly Teaming

SwiftTest, Inc., in infrastructure performance validation, and Tolly Enterprises, LLC, provider of third-party IT testing and validation services, have teamed to create a series of industry standard storage performance validation tests.

The goal of the tests is to provide the industry with standard, in-depth validation criteria for networked storage systems that are constantly evolving with new technologies such as solid state, tiering, and cloud integration.

“As networked storage becomes an even more critical part of big data and cloud-based infrastructures, storage equipment vendors must deliver dramatically increased performance products that are cost-effective for the enterprise data center,” said Kevin Tolly, founder, The Tolly Group. “The industry needs a defined set of criteria to help them with an apples-to-apples comparison of the storage solutions that will best suit their environment. SwiftTest was the obvious performance validation partner for this project due to their innovative workload modeling and the scalability of their load generation products.”

By offering a solution that validates performance across file, block and object storage, SwiftTest allows organizations to stress storage infrastructure to its limits with highly accurate, real-world application workloads. SwiftTest offers a pre-configured test platform, protocol test suites, and test content based on industry standard workloads. Customizable workloads enable any enterprise production network to repeatedly test and validate their specific workloads to determine the best storage products to meet performance and scalability requirements.

The first such industry standard test was performed with the Overland Storage SnapScale X2 Clustered NAS storage system. Overland Storage wanted to demonstrate that multiple SnapScale X2 nodes can work together and spread processing power reliably to increase performance and bandwidth without limits. In order to validate this expected behavior, Tolly and SwiftTest collaborated on a series of tests that evaluated the SnapScale X2 platform in sequential and random R/W test scenarios. The tests validated that the SnapScale X2 can scale to 50 nodes, thus increasing overall NAS capacity and performance simultaneously, while maintaining management simplicity.

“The partnership between Tolly and SwiftTest delivers a great combination for testing and validation of networked storage equipment ideal for large enterprises that need to deploy the next-generation of on premise and cloud-based infrastructure,” said Joe Disher, director of product marketing for disk based products, Overland. “Customers are always looking for test methods to determine the best solution for their project deployments. With Tolly and SwiftTest, the mix of standardized test methodologies and flexible custom testing provides the best of both worlds. These standardized, repeatable tests have made it simple for enterprise customers to see the value provided with Overland’s scale-out NAS products.”

“Enterprise storage architects can no longer solely rely on vendor performance claims. Comprehensive workload modeling that more accurately reflects real-world applications is the goal of this collaboration with the Tolly Group,” said Len Rosenthal, VP marketing, SwiftTest. “Service providers and large enterprises need an impartial and deep understanding of the performance characteristics and limits of different storage solutions. SwiftTest and Tolly will enable more intelligent purchase and configuration decisions resulting in less business risk with lower storage infrastructure spending.“