SUNNYVALE, California, May 12 /PRNewswire/ --

- Spirent TestCenter(TM) Virtual is the Industry's First Single Application Solution to Benchmark Layer 2-7 Performance Across All Elements of a Data Center

In response to the growing challenges of deploying high-performance advanced data centers, Spirent Communications plc (LSE: SPT), a leader in networks, services and devices testing, today introduced Spirent TestCenter(TM) Virtual, the industry's first solution specifically designed to holistically validate the performance of all elements of the data center and cloud computing environments including virtual machines (VM), servers and storage devices. Spirent will demonstrate Spirent TestCenter Virtual at Interop 2009 at Booth #1051.

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Nominated as a finalist for Best of Interop 2009 Award in the Performance Optimization category, Spirent TestCenter Virtual is a software solution that extends the capabilities of the Spirent TestCenter platform to test the performance of a virtualized data center's elements and physical network resources. Spirent TestCenter Virtual is the industry's only solution to:

- Conduct line rate layer 2-7 performance testing of virtual and physical network resources by emulating VLANs, multicast and FCoE traffic along with stateful application protocols - Measure key layer 2 performance metrics such as throughput, frame loss and latency between virtual and physical network elements including network-to-VM, VM-to-network and VM-to-VM - Deliver a unified testing architecture that ensures full compatibility with any Spirent TestCenter interface including the award-winning Spirent Hypermetrics for accurate, high performance FPGA hardware generated network traffic

For data center system vendors delivering the benefits of virtualization to enterprises and service providers, Spirent TestCenter(TM) Virtual delivers the power to architect high performance data center systems, mitigate risks of migration or consolidation of existing IT infrastructure, minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) of testing resources and optimize infrastructure utilization by testing performance in a multitude of real-world scenarios.

Leading industry analysts agree that equipment vendors as well as data centers operators need to take a holistic approach to ensure success in a today's hypercompetitive and economically challenging business environment.

Enterprise demand for virtualization is strong, and equipment vendors need to make sure that their offerings support virtual and cloud based application delivery, said Matthias Machowinski, directing analyst, enterprise, voice and data, Infonetics Research. Having a complete set of virtualization testing tools, such as those found in the Spirent TestCenter Virtual, which includes network, server, VM and storage testing, is a necessity in preparing IT infrastructure for today and tomorrow's demanding data centers environments.

System vendors are under significant pressure to deliver best-in-class solutions while reducing product development costs and test cycle times, said Tim Jefferson, general manager, Converged Core Solutions group at Spirent Communication. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for holistic solutions that help to achieve those goals. At the end of the day, network architects and engineers who rely on Spirent TestCenter Virtual are able to adopt a unified approach to developing virtualized and cloud-based data center systems.

The solution will also be showcased at Spirent Proof of Concept (SPoC) Labs and Collaboration Centers in Beijing, London and Sunnyvale. For more information on Spirent TestCenter Virtual (www.spirent.com/go/stcv) and other Spirent TestCenter solutions visit www.spirent.com/go/stc or follow Spirent on Twitter at www.twitter.com/spirentcomm

About Spirent Communications plc

For more information visit http://www.spirent.com/news/about_spirent.cfm

Sailaja Tennati of Spirent Communications, Direct Tel +1-770-432-3225, sailaja.tennati@spirent.com / Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090220/SPIRENTLOGO