Need a Traffic Generator that is simple to set up quickly

[Fran Terlingo (fterling)]

All,

 

I need to quickly stand up a traffic generator in the next week. I came across Ostinato and Cisco TRex. The Cisco TRex seems much more difficult to stand up from what I can tell versus Ostinato. I will be using a Cisco UCS C220 M4 server with a 10 Gig SFP+ mLOM card (VIC 1227 model network card) and the onboard 1 Gig copper ports of the server. I will run the Ostinato on the UCS server and will connect a 10 Gig port on the server to a Nexus 9000 switch which then connects 10 Gig to a Nexus 7000 switch which then connects with 1 Gig to the copper interface of the same UCS server Ostinato. I need to test a speed mismatch QoS scenario where I need to generate 2 flows from the 10 Gig interface of the UCS Ostinato with DSCP 0 markings that congest the 1 Gig port. I then need to change the DSCP of one of the flows to Expedite Forwarding (value 46) and prove the QoS policy on the Nexus 7k can forward the priority flow under congestion conditions without packet loss.

 

So it looks like the setup below in case I lost anyone (UCS server is the same with unidirectional flows transmitted out the 10 Gig server port and received on the 1 Gig onboard copper port of same server).

 

UCS Ostinato ----10 Gig Link----Nexus 9k switch----10 Gig Link----Nexus 7k switch----1 Gig Link----UCS Ostinato

 

1.      Can Ostinato perform DiffServ / DSCP markings ??

2.      Can Ostinato generate 10 Gig line rate of traffic with a UCS server with 8 cores of 2.4 GHz and 64 GB memory ??

3.      I am looking for the easiest path to get Ostinato stood up and which one to buy. Can Ostinato install on Windows Server Bare Metal on the UCS server ?? My second choice would be to run Ostinato as a VM on VMware ESX as long as the hypervisor does not impede achieving 10 Gbps line rate.

4.      If I do the VM option, does it come as an OVA with a Linux OS bundled ??

5.      The bootable ISO looks attractive but not sure if I would still get the GUI and if it would have the appropriate drivers for the UCS server ??

 

Any help would be enormously appreciated. I have a limited time and knowledge and need to setup something quick.

 

Thanks,

Fran

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[John Doe]

Hi pal. IMHO: Ostinato is much more simple to deploy and use, whilst trex a little more efficient to generate solid flow. ‎It's just imo, can't give you a numbers, but DPDK on which trex rely on is a quite good and optimized solution. 

1: it is possible to set dscp

3: ostinato will work on windows, I used to fool around with

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От: Fran Terlingo (fterling) Отправлено: пятница, 19 января 2018 г., 8:46 Кому: osti...@googlegroups.com Тема: [ostinato] Need a Traffic Generator that is simple to set up quickly

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[Carlos Mendioroz]

Hi Fran,
some answers inline:

Fran Terlingo (fterling) @ 18/01/2018 20:01 -0600 dixit:

> All,
>
>  
>
> I need to quickly stand up a traffic generator in the next week. I came
> across Ostinato and Cisco TRex. The Cisco TRex seems much more difficult
> to stand up from what I can tell versus Ostinato. I will be using a
> Cisco UCS C220 M4 server with a 10 Gig SFP+ mLOM card (VIC 1227 model
> network card) and the onboard 1 Gig copper ports of the server. I will
> run the Ostinato on the UCS server and will connect a 10 Gig port on the
> server to a Nexus 9000 switch which then connects 10 Gig to a Nexus 7000
> switch which then connects with 1 Gig to the copper interface of the
> same UCS server Ostinato. I need to test a speed mismatch QoS scenario
> where I need to generate 2 flows from the 10 Gig interface of the UCS
> Ostinato with DSCP 0 markings that congest the 1 Gig port. I then need
> to change the DSCP of one of the flows to Expedite Forwarding (value 46)
> and prove the QoS policy on the Nexus 7k can forward the priority flow
> under congestion conditions without packet loss.

You can create two flows for 1 case and another 2 flows for the second.
Ostinato, as it seems TRex does, pregenerates flow data and then plays
it. It does have a python API you can use to script the test.

>
>  
>
> So it looks like the setup below in case I lost anyone (UCS server is
> the same with unidirectional flows transmitted out the 10 Gig server
> port and received on the 1 Gig onboard copper port of same server).
>
>  
>
> UCS Ostinato ----10 Gig Link----Nexus 9k switch----10 Gig Link----Nexus
> 7k switch----1 Gig Link----UCS Ostinato
>
>  
>
> 1.      Can Ostinato perform DiffServ / DSCP markings ??

Yes.

>
> 2.      Can Ostinato generate 10 Gig line rate of traffic with a UCS
> server with 8 cores of 2.4 GHz and 64 GB memory ??

I don't think anybody knows. But if you are in a position to give
Srivats a couple of C220s (for him to keep) I'm sure he can find out for
you :)

>
> 3.      I am looking for the easiest path to get Ostinato stood up and
> which one to buy. Can Ostinato install on Windows Server Bare Metal on
> the UCS server ?? My second choice would be to run Ostinato as a VM on
> VMware ESX as long as the hypervisor does not impede achieving 10 Gbps
> line rate.

No problem for Ostinato running on top of Windows on top of the UCS.
You can use DirectPath and the ESXi will not hurt the performance much.

>
> 4.      If I do the VM option, does it come as an OVA with a Linux OS
> bundled ??

No idea.

>
> 5.      The bootable ISO looks attractive but not sure if I would still
> get the GUI and if it would have the appropriate drivers for the UCS
> server ??
>

No idea.

>  
>
> Any help would be enormously appreciated. I have a limited time and
> knowledge and need to setup something quick.
>

I would say you should go with TRex. No because it is better (I just
came to know TRex because of your message) but because it will be much
easier for you in the future, being you a cisco insider.

>  
>
> Thanks,
>
> Fran

-Carlos


--
Carlos G Mendioroz <tr...@huapi.ba.ar> LW7 EQI Argentina

[Srivats P]

1.      Can Ostinato perform DiffServ / DSCP markings ??

Yes 

2.      Can Ostinato generate 10 Gig line rate of traffic with a UCS server with 8 cores of 2.4 GHz and 64 GB memory ??

Ostinato cannot use more than one core for transmit from a single port, so most likely no. From some recent issues on GitHub, it seems that the VM with SRIOV on KVM is able to reach close to 8-9Gbps with 9K jumbo frames. (I wouldn't mind a few 10G NICs to do some official test though! :-)  But from your test description, I don't think you need the full 10G, you just need more than 1G to test the QoS - so 2Gbps or 3Gbps should also work for your test I guess.

3.      I am looking for the easiest path to get Ostinato stood up and which one to buy. Can Ostinato install on Windows Server Bare Metal on the UCS server ?? My second choice would be to run Ostinato as a VM on VMware ESX as long as the hypervisor does not impede achieving 10 Gbps line rate.

Ostinato works on Windows, but the max tx rate is an order of magnitude less than on Linux, so I wouldn't recommend that. I've had some reports of the VMDK format not being compatible with recent versions of ESXi. So, I would recommend Linux, KVM, VM and SRIOV (native Linux package *may* also work).

4.      If I do the VM option, does it come as an OVA with a Linux OS bundled ??

Yes, an OVA is available with a Linux guest. However, as I said ESXI may not work with the VMDK. 

5.      The bootable ISO looks attractive but not sure if I would still get the GUI and if it would have the appropriate drivers for the UCS server ??

You get the GUI, but I can't confirm on the drivers bit.

You could try all of the ISO, VM with SRIOV and Linux to see which works best for you.

Srivats