Shunra VE 5.0 takes away app performance guesswork

It's always nice to know how an enterprise application will perform before it goes live – before your phone lights up with calls from annoyed users. One way to cut down on angry calls is to use a WAN simulation package and test before deployment. There are a few ways this can be done using off-the-shelf hardware and open source programs, but you generally get what you pay for (or don't), and miss out on the test automation, ease of use, and comprehensive reporting that accompany commercial products.

[ ShunraVE 5.0 was selected for an InfoWorld Technology of the Year award. See the slideshow of all winners in the networking category. ]

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Shunra's VE (Virtual Enterprise) 5.0 allows IT to create a complete representation of the network, including routers, gateways, and redundant connections, in the space of a single workbench. With VE, IT can create just about any set of WAN conditions, complete with multiple routes and link speeds (up to OC12), latency, packet loss, and various link impairments. Shunra bundles a specialized copy of Microsoft Visio to define the network's properties and other characteristics with VE 5.0, and it includes the new VE Transaction Manager and VE Analyzer.

Good things just get better

My experience with Shunra goes back a few years, and over that time, I have seen the product mature to the point where it has to be considered an indispensable tool for anyone rolling out a new network-based product or needing to know how a data replication will perform across the WAN. Most recently, I used Shunra in a round of WAN acceleration and optimization tests and have come to rely on it completely because of its ease of use and consistency. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate loading up a WAN definition and knowing it will behave the same every time it runs.

Installing the hardware onto the test bench took only five minutes. Simply connect to the management port to the administrative network and the test hardware to the other 10/100Mbps copper or 2 Gigabit fiber interfaces, and you are almost ready to go. The brain of the operation is the VE Suite that installs on a client PC – in my case, a Windows XP Pro computer. The suite will install a copy of MySQL during the installation process to track test results. Unlike last time, I had no trouble installing the 5.0 package on the same hardware as the database.