Aviz introduces FTAS 2.2 with BGP NetOps and scale testing

FTAS 2.2 updates a virtual test suite used to validate SONiC fabric deployment readiness, adding BGP NetOps day-2 scenarios, dual-stack and BGP graceful restart scalability coverage, and ECMP path and route testing. It also expands automated failure data collection and troubleshooting support for enterprise deployment workflows.

Research Overview

Fabric Test Automation Suite (FTAS) is described as a virtual machine that runs an extensive set of test cases to evaluate SONiC for fabric deployment readiness. The test cases target fabric validation across functions, features, scale, day-2 operations, and chaos scenarios.

The vendor states FTAS evolves based on customer feedback and incorporates features from the latest SONiC releases. FTAS 2.2 is presented as a new version that refines pre-deployment testing and assessment coverage.

Key Findings

FTAS 2.2 adds enhanced test coverage for BGP NetOps operations, including link and node drain and restore behaviors using route-map based control. The update also expands dual-stack testing for IPv4/IPv6 coexistence and introduces BGP graceful restart testing under failure conditions.

The release includes ECMP scalability validation across different combinations of ECMP paths and route counts. The vendor also reports expanded troubleshooting support through additional automated data capture and simplified access to debugging artifacts.

Technical Breakdown

For day-2 NetOps, the BGP NetOps coverage includes multi-AS configuration and adjacency and tests route convergence and data-plane behavior using routed interfaces and loopback-based paths. The described drain and restore scenarios apply deny and permit route-maps for node drain/restore and link drain/restore.

The BGP NetOps scenarios also include node and link drain with IPv6 traffic, node and link drain using prefix-lists, and node drain or link drain using AS path prepend. The vendor notes this coverage is based on existing customer use cases and will be expanded in future releases.

Operational Impact

FTAS 2.2 adds dual-stack scalability testing that evaluates prefix, host, and longest-prefix-match (LPM) routes against scale limits, with scenarios listed for up to 128K prefixes and 32K host and LPM routes. The release also includes BGP graceful restart tests with dual-stack scale up to 32K prefixes and additional cases that change the graceful restart state and involve restart actions.

ECMP scalability testing in FTAS 2.2 validates device functionality across ECMP and route scalability combinations, including scenarios such as 16 ECMP paths with 32K routes and 64 ECMP paths with 128K routes, plus a case described as testing scalability to device ports with 1K routes per path. The vendor states basic coverage is added for dynamic port breakout, and it reports prior resilience tests with port-channel configurations can now be conducted without requiring port-channel configurations on DUT links.

Enhanced Failure Analysis

FTAS 2.2 introduces automatic collection of tech support dumps for all devices when a test case fails, with the data saved in the test report folder for the run. It also adds syslog collection for all DUTs for each test case, similarly saved in the same report folder.

The release further includes DOM information display for port issues, such as when a port fails to activate. The vendor states DOM data, syslog, and tech support dumps are used together to narrow down underlying causes when failures occur during a test run.

FTAS 2.2 extends SONiC fabric readiness testing with new BGP NetOps day-2 scenarios, dual-stack and BGP graceful restart scalability coverage, ECMP scalability validation, and added automated debugging data collection. This “Blog Signals brief” is a fact-based summary of the vendor blog.