vSwitch Testing

Virtual Switch (vSwitch) Performance Testing

TeraVM is a virtualized network test solution, used by the leading vendors of virtual switching to test the performance and functionality of thousands of virtual interfaces on their highly scalable virtual switch (vSwitch).

vSwitch Architecture

As shown above the vSwitch is generally separated into two major components: the Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM), which runs inside a hypervisor, and the external Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM), which manages the VEMs. Configuration is performed through the VSM and is automatically propagated to all the VEMs. The VSM can manage many VEMs each running on a unique host.

vSwitch Test Requirements

An important attribute to the VEM vNIC is that it will only register as being in active use in the VSM when there is a Virtual Machine (VM) attached to it. Therefore, to test a vSwitch at scale would result in configuring and managing thousands of VMs. In order to verify vSwitch functionality would further require each VM to generate network traffic per vNIC.

Why TeraVM?

TeraVM is a virtualized network test solution, which is highly scalable and easily distributable among hosts. TeraVM provides for the emulation of thousands of VMs with stateful network application traffic.

A key benefit of TeraVM is the per flow software architecture which enables multiple vNICs per emulated VM, from which each vNIC is capable of transmitting unique network application traffic.

As integrated test solution TeraVM provides real-time performance analysis on each and every emulated VM vNIC and network application associated with the vNIC.