Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems test the real-world scalability of their storage platforms using WorkloadWisdomHitachi Data Systems (formerly BlueArc) found scalability testing of their storage platforms a challenge. After a competitive analysis, they selected WorkloadWisdom and immediately reduced test times from days to minutes.

About HitachiDue to the scalability of the Hitachi products, the challenge was to perform realistic TCP connection-rate tests. They needed to create 30,000 connections for their storage platform and failing to reach this number was not an option since Hitachi customers commonly run tens of thousands of connections.

Using an application written in-house, Hitachi could run simultaneous tests, but on the QA server farm they were immediately faced with memory limitations. Each client was constrained to only 750 connections, so to run one simple test, they had to get 40 clients all started at once to product 30,000 connections. The process would take all day to run a

single test.

Challenges at Hitachi• Limited scalability testing. Confirmation of which

storage arrays would offer the best performance today, and critical insight into storage headroom when increasing data loads.

• Time-consuming methods wasted precious resources. Valuable time wasted by needing a full day to run a single test.

• Required to write home-grown test tools. Fragile and inefficient test tools.

CASE STUDY

Choosing WorkloadWisdom came down to depth and breadth of the tools – granular configurability and great protocol support. And I like that WorkloadWisdom is very NAS focused. The appliance does just what I want, and does it well.

Nigel Stolting US QA Manager at Hitachi

Having WorkloadWisdom has improved my job tenfold. I’m now free to do things more important and more technically challenging than running around trying to start a bunch of clients simultaneously.

Nigel Stolting US QA Manager at Hitachi

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The WorkloadWisdom Solution: All about ScalabilityAfter an exhaustive vendor evaluation, Hitachi chose the WorkloadWisdom 1G Series as it was the only solution that enabled real-world scalability testing that they couldn’t do before. WorkloadWisdom has reduced what used to take a day down to minutes.

Along with simple time savings in running tests, the WorkloadWisdom User Interface and the deep protocol support allows easy to build tests. With its drop-down toolbox, everything in the interface is laid out – uncluttered and intuitive. Users can drag in a command and configure it right there.

Hitachi has future plans to load test the file system itself using WorkloadWisdom. It easily performs high-performance load testing while maintaining the connection level required by Hitachi’s highly-scalable platforms.

WorkloadWisdom Benefits• Platform scalability requirements easily met. No

longer bound by limited number of simultaneous connections

• Reduced a day to 10 minutes. The same test that took a day now takes 10 minutes to complete and is easily repeatable.

• Robust suite of test tools. Highly configurable commands for a broad range of protocols ensures reliable, repeatable tests.

Why Buy WorkloadWisdom Product Suite• Time savings in executing multiple test suites.

Single-screen, graphical control of tools enables fast, repeatable testing.

• Ease of test case creation and control at the protocol level. Granular configuration and results are available for individual commands.

• Consistent, repeatable results. Tests start with the press of a button and deliver repeatable results.