Ixia has introduced CloudStorm - said to be the first multi-terabit network security test platform delivering unprecedented performance to test and validate the increased capacity, efficiency, and resiliency of hyperscale cloud data centers.
CloudStorm enables users to validate a data center’s capacity to handle cloud-scale applications, measure the impact of SSL traffic on performance, and assess Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) mitigation techniques to handle terabit attacks. This flexible and scalable solution simulates 2.4 terabits of mixed applications, as well as malicious traffic, to test the critical elements of complex data centers, including server applications, storage workloads, and network security devices.
“As computing evolves to the cloud and Internet of Things, it is increasingly important that networks are secure and perform well,” said Jim Duffy, senior analyst, 451 Research. “While service providers routinely test networks, it is necessary to have tools that enable cloud providers and enterprises to be ready for the cloud. Ixia has adapted their network testing solutions to fulfill this need.”
DDoS attacks have reached unprecedented heights: the first wave of MIRAI Botnet DDoS reached 665Gbps using Internet of Things (IoT) devices. CloudStorm is the first test platform capable of simulating IoT devices generating multi-terabit DDoS traffic, which is 2x times greater than the volume of any previously known attack. This enables customers to validate the performance of hyperscale data centers easily and economically, while improving the security resiliency of their network.
Growing security and privacy concerns require that traffic is encrypted. In fact, Sandvine, a global leader in Network Policy Control, estimates that 70 percent of the global Internet traffic is encrypted and 85 percent of requests to Google’s servers use encrypted connections. Encrypted traffic improves overall security, however inspecting that traffic for malicious content and behavior is difficult and creates performance bottlenecks.
CloudStorm offers high-performance encryption support with hardware offload, facilitating a cloud-scale volume of SSL traffic. As a result, CloudStorm offers enterprises and data center operators unmatched encrypted application performance to find the right balance between security with SSL inspection capabilities and application performance with an acceptable quality of experience.
“Extensive encryption is now a reality. Security and application performance validation in this encrypted world needed a dramatic increase in the performance of security test platforms,” said Sunil Kalidindi, vice president of product management at Ixia. “CloudStorm helps customers break the SSL test barrier by delivering a near terabit level of SSL bandwidth with strong encryption ciphers.”
CloudStorm is capable of supporting 100, 50, 40, 25, and 10GE, on the same port. Customers do not need to purchase a variety of hardware to support each speed, saving IT budgets for essential business investment. This simplifies management and reduces data center and pre-deployment lab costs for space, cooling, and electricity.
