Analyzing and Testing Vyatta Subscription Edition 6.5 R1

A Router Analysis, Inc. independent report.

*** Note ***  The report has been updated to clarify questions that I have received.  The new report # is RA-111812-02.

Router Analysis, Inc. has released the full testing report on Vyatta Subscription Edition 6.5 R1.  The report contains data on traffic forwarding, routing, QoS and ACLs.

One of the more important subjects covered in the report is system optimization.  There is no such thing as commodity hardware when it comes to specialized applications.  While the Software Defined Data Center is starting to come alive, there is still confusion in the market as to what the SDDC term really means.

Router Analysis, Inc. started looking into Vyatta as one part of a well designed SDDC.  The end goal is to come up with a proper design utilizing software based routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers and supporting infrastructure to help companies decide if the current functionality of a SDDC is usable for them today.

One nice thing about Vyatta is their use of open source products including Linux, Quagga and OpenVPN with a mix of necessarily enhanced/replaced systems such as their version of IPTables/IPChains utilized for firewall features.  By using products that are known in the community, administrators have a better idea of what limitations may exist on the system.

The testing of Vyatta Subscription Edition 6.5 R1 in the Router Analysis, Inc. lab was not as exhaustive as we would have liked it to be, partly due to Vyatta’s acquisition by Brocade.

Other tests that should be done include:

• BGP/OSPF Convergence
• More exhaustive ACL testing
• Running under Xen, Hyper-V and KVM
• VPN functionality
• Multi-processor (4 way SMP)
• vPlane

Some of these topics will be covered in up coming tests and published in the future.  As a company Router Analysis, Inc. takes user input very seriously.  If you have suggestions or thoughts please post them on the message boards or email us.

Enjoy the doucument and if you have any questions, let us know.  If you would like Router Analysis, Inc. to look at one of your products, reach out to us, we are available on Twitter directly along with our President, Steven Noble.