Load DynamiX With New Storage Workload Modeling Products

Load DynamiX, Inc., in storage infrastructure performance validation, announced its latest storage workload modeling products that enable enterprise storage architects and engineers accelerate deployment of solid state technologies, validate performance, and optimize storage budgets.

Key offerings include:

• An all-in-one two rack unit (2RU) appliance that can emulate tens of thousands of clients across all SAN and NAS environments.
• A VDI application workload model that looks at application bottlenecks from the storage perspective.
• An application modeling of data compression and inline deduplication which is key to investment decision-making for flash and hybrid storage systems.

“Our new products represent two key initiatives: lowering the cost and reducing the complexity of deploying storage performance validation solutions, while greatly enhancing the value of storage workload modeling,” stated Philippe Vincent, CEO, Load DynamiX. “These breakthroughs will help storage vendors and architects dramatically improve their performance testing and change validation processes – especially around the adoption of flash and hybrid storage products.”

New Appliances
To cost-effectively stress test enterprise SAN, NAS, and object storage systems, the new LDX Enterprise Series solution combines the Load DynamiX Enterprise workload modeling application with a load generation appliance containing both 10GbE and FC testing interface ports in a 2RU enclosure.

This new appliance complements the recently introduced high density variants of its FC (16Gb), and Ethernet (10GE and 1GE) appliances to help customers stress their largest storage systems that now include unified appliances for SAN and NAS environments.

A new virtual appliance is available as a software-only version of the Load Dynamix load generation appliance. Aimed at technology vendor engineering organizations, it allows development engineers duplicate proven approaches already used by their QA organizations. Vendors can now test earlier in their development process and accelerate time to market while improving product quality.

Simplified Storage Workload Modeling
Load DynamiX continues to deliver on its strategy to build complete storage workload modeling solution that simulates real-world applications. Enhancements include a simpler user interface, improved analytics and flexible charting capabilities for product comparisons. New reporting templates will facilitate typical use cases, such as performance capacity planning and head-to-head product comparisons.

A new VDI application workload model is specifically designed to help users evaluate storage systems for VDI deployments. By creating a large number of VDI Linked Clones and measuring VDI boot storm performance, storage architects can see how well the underlying storage infrastructure will perform under varying user and workload conditions. Armed with this information, storage architects can make decisions that eliminate both under- and over-provisioning of storage.

Granular workload models for NFSv3, SMB 2, iSCSI and FC have also been added. The new models enable a high degree of customization and detail around storage access patterns, block/file sizes and distributions, directory structures, and load properties.

Modeling of Compression and Deduplication
Load DynamiX is a storage performance validation solution that can model data compression and inline deduplication – key issues storage architects must quantify properly to assess the ROI of adopting flash or hybrid storage. Both technologies substantially reduce the price per gigabyte and are critical to flash and hybrid storage adoption.
 
“Although storage systems that incorporate flash promise to relieve all storage performance problems, determining which applications justify the need for flash and exactly how much flash to deploy are fundamental questions,” said Jeff Boles, director, lab validation services, Taneja Group. “Workload modeling and performance validation solutions, such as Load DynamiX, will help storage architects and engineers obtain predictive insight into storage infrastructure behavior for performance assurance and cost optimization.“

Load DynamiX will be exhibiting their products at storage Innovations Conference in Santa Clara, CA on April 22-24, 2014 and at EMC World 2014 in Las Vegas, NE, from May 5-8, 2014.