Howto test new or modified network infrastructures with standardized testing methods?

[thorsten.steffen]

Hi,

I'm sure many of you regularly do tests of new or modified network infrastructures before going live. And you developed detailed plans and schedules how to test, how I did too.

Does anybody know if there exist standardized testing methods for this cases?

Like recommendations how to check features, performance, hardware failures, convergence times, software updates, network management etc.?

Does Cisco offer information concerning that?

Especially for software testing there exist many methods to check if it's working properly, but for technical it infrastructures I did not find any informations.

Best Regards

Thorsten

[Sebastian Helmer]

There is a lot I could wrote maybe, but lets try an easy answer. Once u designed the network u have the idea what u want. Check if that works..also u can use iperf to check the speed but Iwould say it is nice without utulization;)...

check redundancy, reboot Switches if u want, remove cables..try to simulate problems u expect and want to prevent...

I guess when u think about that you are on a good way..

for operation, use snmp, netflow to check your netwok quality, link, port errors, feature traps (e.g. trap for portsecurity)...etc..

cheers,

Sebastian

[thorsten.steffen]

That's what we do each time, using large checklists we began to develope  many years ago

We're looking for standardized methods similar to the ones existing for software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing).

[Jon Marshall]

Thorsten

I guess you are looking for something like this -

http://www.ciscopress.com/store/enterprise-network-testing-testing-throughout-the-network-9781587141270

should say I don't own the book or have ever read it.

I have never come across a set of standardised testing methods in the same way software has but that's is not particularly surprising when you consider networking as an industry is a long way behind other parts of IT in that respect.

We are all still using CLI for most of our jobs :-)

I suspect with SDN that there will be a far more extensive range of testing tools available in the long run but we aren't there yet.

Personally I do pretty much what you already have. When I was involved in design we had proof of concept labs where we could test it would actually work and which often fed back into the design.

Then we had to test it with the existing production environment to see how it impacted on what we already had.

If all that went well we then pretty much knew what tests we needed to run when we implemented it into production.

Jon

[thorsten.steffen]

Hi Jon,

many thanks, we'll order the book, what you can see in the preview looks quite interesting.

Thorsten