Administrator Guide

Flow Vision Administrator’s Guide 31
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Chapter
3
Flow Generator
In this chapter
•Overview of Flow Generator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
•Flow Generator management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
•Flow Generator examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
•Flow Generator references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Overview of Flow Generator
Flow Generator is a test traffic generator for pre-testing the SAN infrastructure (including internal
connections) for robustness before deploying it. Flow Generator provides you with the ability to:
• Configure a 16G FC-capable port as a simulated device that can transmit frames at full 16G
line rate.
• Emulate a 16G SAN without actually having any 16G hosts or targets or SAN-testers.
• Pre-test the entire SAN fabric at the full line rate, including optics and cables on ISLs as well as
internal connections within a switch.
Flow Generator achieves this using simulation mode (SIM) ports. SIM-Ports behave like standard
ports, but are used only for testing. By using SIM-Ports, Flow Generator traffic is terminated at the
destination port and does not leave the switch. Refer to “SIM-Port attributes and configuration” on
page 41 for more information on SIM-Ports.
Flow Generator can generate standard frames or create custom frames with sizes and patterns you
specify. A sample use case would be to create a traffic flow from a Source ID to a Destination ID to
validate routing and throughput. “Creating a flow from a specific Source ID to a specific
Destination ID” on page 38 provides an example of the command and the results for this use case.
CAUTION
You should not use Flow Generator in an active production environment, as the Flow Generator
traffic can saturate the links and will impact the production traffic sharing the same links.
Flow Generator setup
Flow Generator generates and receives traffic only from simulated ingress and egress ports
(SIM-Ports) which emulate device entries in the Name Server database, so that they are treated as
real devices and can be used to evaluate various switch and fabric operations such as QoS and
Traffic Isolation. For more information on working with SIM-Ports, refer to “SIM-Port attributes and
configuration” on page 41.