IxLoad 10.40 is a software release targeted for the Virtual Edition platform. This release is focused on updating internal software components, on optimizing the performance of the virtual platform, and on addressing issues reported by our customers.
IxLoad 10.40 updates the internal product architecture by switching from CentOS 7.9 Guest OS to Debian 12 Guest OS across all system components (Virtual Chassis / Virtual Load Module / Virtual Test Appliance). This change does not impact the functionality / performance or user experience.
IxLoad 10.40 supports all Private Cloud platforms (powered by ESXi / KVM / Hyper-V hypervisors and vCenter / OpenStack orchestrators) as well as all Public Cloud platforms (Amazon AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure Marketplace, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure).
The application compatibility includes IxOS 10.40 / IxNetwork 10.40 / IxLoad 10.40 but these versions only support Virtual Ports and do not support Hardware Ports. Any user who wants to use Hardware Ports should utilize the IxOS 10.00 / IxNetwork 10.00 / IxLoad 10.00 versions instead.
Please see the sections below for more details on application and hardware compatibility, new features, resolved defects, and known issues.
| Application | Version |
| BPS | Not Supported |
| HLTAPI | 10.40 |
| IxANVL | Not Supported |
| IxLoad | 10.40 |
| IxNetwork | 10.40 |
| IxOS | 10.40 |
| IxVM | 10.40 |
| Licensing | 5.70 |
| Metronome | Not Supported |
| Wireshark | 3.2.8 |
| Chassis / Appliance | Load Module | Data | Video | Voice | IxLoad Attack | Wireless | |
| PVM | DDoSv2 | ||||||
| Virtual Chassis on Private Cloud | Virtual Load Module | ✔(**) | |||||
| Virtual Test Appliance on Private Cloud | ✔(**) | ||||||
| Virtual Test Appliance on Amazon AWS | ✔ | ✔ | ✔(**) | ✔ | |||
| Virtual Test Appliance on Google Cloud Platform | ✔ | ✔ | ✔(**) | ✔ | |||
| Virtual Test Appliance on Microsoft Azure | ✔ | ✔ | ✔(**) | ✔ | |||
| Virtual Test Appliance on Oracle Cloud Platform | ✔(**) | ✔(**) | ✔(**) | ✔(**) | |||
NOTE:
The modules marked with (**) are partially supported. Please contact Customer Support for the list of available features.
Please visit the IxLoad Software Downloads & Documentation for more information of the previous release notes.
| Notes |
|---|
| Support for Debian 12 Guest OS has been added for vChassis / vCard / vAppliance components. This replaces the previous CentOS 7.9 Guest OS (EOL after 2024-06-30). |
| Support for improved Concurrent Connections scalability has been added. This includes HTTP CC vertical scale and HTTPS / TLS CC optimized memory utilization. |
| Support for improved Static Routes CLI configuration has been added. This includes vChassis Backplane ETH1 interface and configuration persistency after restart. |
| Support for Chassis Builder API has been discontinued starting with this release. Similar functionality is available via the REST API from the vChassis / vAppliance. |
| Support for improved Microsoft Azure Public Cloud installation has been added. This includes ARM Deployment Templates, License Server, and Network Manager settings. |
| Bug Number | Notes |
|---|---|
| IXLOAD-11233 | Fixed an issue causing the configuration apply action to fail because of licensing errors which were encountered while executing the license optimization algorithm for certain specific test scenarios. |
| IXLOAD-11234 | Fixed an issue causing the application to not recognize correctly perpetual licenses in 10G (namely 939-9537 / 939-9538 / 939-9539 / 939-9540) and 100G (namely 939-9637 / 939-9638 / 939-9639) variants. |
| IXLOAD-11223 | Fixed an issue causing the License Server installed on the Windows Client deployed inside Microsoft Azure Public Cloud to not function correctly because Accelerated Networking was disabled. |
| IXLOAD-11224 | Fixed an issue causing the product installation inside Microsoft Azure Public Cloud via ARM Deployment Templates to fail because of issues related to Storage Account / Boot Diagnostics. |
| IXLOAD-11225 | Fixed an issue causing the Virtual Test Appliance deployed inside Microsoft Azure Public Cloud to lose some of its network settings due to Network Manager misconfiguration. |
| IXLOAD-11220 | Fixed an issue causing the Deployment Wizard installation on top of VMware vCenter platform to fail because the vChassis OVA file required for deployment was not recognized. |
| IXLOAD-11221 | Fixed an issue causing the Installation Guide documentation for KVM hypervisor to not include deployment steps when using the VIRT-INSTALL command with PCI-PT / SR-IOV test interfaces. |
| IXLOAD-1897 | Fixed an issue causing the maximum Concurrent Connections for HTTPS / TLS to be limited at 25k on a vCard with 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM. The maximum value for HTTPS CC is now increased by 5x to 125k. |
| IXLOAD-8901 | Fixed an issue causing the Virtual Port color (Green / Red / Gray) to be displayed incorrectly in the IxLoad GUI and not reflect the actual Virtual Port state (Link Up / Link Down / Not Ready). |
| IXLOAD-10147 | Fixed an issue causing the L2-3 Global Statistics view to be empty when running tests on Virtual Test Appliances / Virtual Load Modules which were provisioned with more than 2 vCPU cores. |
| IXLOAD-10292 | Fixed an issue causing the maximum Concurrent Connections for HTTP to not scale when more memory was allocated to the vCard. The maximum value for HTTP CC can now utilize all the available memory. |
| IXLOAD-11211 | Fixed an issue causing the Static Routes / Management Interfaces configuration to be erased from the Management ETH0 interface after rebooting the vChassis / vCard / vAppliance. |
| IXLOAD-11212 | Fixed an issue causing the Static Routes / Management Interfaces configuration to be unavailable on the Backplane ETH1 interface from the Virtual Chassis. |
| IXLOAD-11213 | Fixed an issue causing the SSH Server inside vChassis / vCard / vAppliance to allow connections which were using SSH encryption algorithms with reduced security. |
| IXLOAD-11214 | Fixed an issue causing the License Server IP Address configuration inside the Virtual Chassis to fail when using Deployment Wizard to create the virtual test topology. |
IxLoad 10.40 is a licensed product. It ships with Ixia Licensing 5.70. When IxLoad tests are executed on Ixia hardware (appliances or load modules in chassis) a license needs to be installed on each chassis or appliance. In Virtual Environment, the license may be installed on a centralized server in your network. For further information about the new IxLicensing system, please refer to the "Ixia Licensing Management User Guide" provided with the software and downloadable from the Ixia web site.
On August 12th, 2022, many of Keysight's Network Test, Network Visibility, & Edge to Core (NAS/formerly Ixia) products migrated to a new license structure.
CRITICAL:If you perform licensing operations after August 12th, 2022, without upgrading the licensing software to the latest version, licenses may not register properly, and some features may be missing.This could impact testing and result in downtime.For details, click here.
IxLoad has two components: (1) the 'chassis' component needs to be installed on the Ixia chassis being used; (2) the 'client' component needs to be installed on the user workstation where the IxLoad GUI will be run.
NOTE: The IxLoad Chassis component is no longer needed for VE Platform.
As part of the IxLoad installation, the installer program automatically installs the following prerequisites
that are coming as separate installers: Microsoft SQL Server 2017 and Microsoft .Net Framework 4.8.1.
In some situations, a dialog may be displayed notifying you to browse to the specific prerequisites installers' location.
You may find them under Prerequisites folder in the root of the flash-drive or you may download them from Ixia website.
To access the prerequisites you must sign-in on www.ixiacom.com site and browse to product installation prerequisites site.
If you experience any issue related to the installation of these prerequisites please refer to the below notes:
NOTE: During installation you may be presented with a error dialog declaring a 1945 error has occurred. One possible cause is the presence of anti-adware
or anti-virus software running on the target machine. Please disable these applications prior to your next installation attempt.
Installation on the Windows OS user workstation
The IxLoad installer will only install the Client component on the user workstation. In order to run the IxLoad Video test, the user workstation is required to have
Windows Media player version 9 or later.
IxLoad 10.40 requires the user workstation to satisfy the following requirements:
Minimum
- A dual core CPU
- A minimum of 4GB RAM
- 20GB of free disk space to install plus an additional 5GB of temporary space
- Run time free disk space should be at least 10GB
Recommended
- A quad core CPU
- A minimum of 8GB RAM
- 64 bit Windows Operating System (See Operating System Support below)
- 20GB of free disk space to install plus an additional 5GB of temporary space
- Run time free disk space should be at least 10GB
Ixia Application Server
- Use Case: Multiple IxLoad instances on the single machine and large scale system testing
- Ixia Application Server running 64 bit Windows 2019 Server or equivalent
- 20GB of free disk space to install plus an additional 5GB of temporary space per user
- Run time free disk space should be at least 40GB
Operating System Support
The versions of Windows operating systems that are supported are:
- Windows 2022 Server Standard 64-bit
- Windows 2019 Server Standard 64-bit
- Windows 2016 Server Standard 64-bit
- Windows 10 Pro/Enterprise 64-bit (*)
- Windows 11 Consumer/Business/Enterprise 64-bit
(*) The following Non-English versions of the Windows 10 Pro operating system are supported:
- German
- Hebrew
- Japanese
NOTE: Only English ASCII characters are accepted in input fields in the application or file locations.
Starting with IxLoad 9.20, the IxLoad MW component can be deployed as a standalone OVA or QCOW2 images running Ubuntu Server 20.04.
- The OVA can be imported in VMWare.
- The QCOW2 image is embedded inside a .sh script. This image comes pre-configured with 4 vCPUs and 8 GB RAM
- To import the QCOW2 image on KVM, execute IxLoad.sh script. This will extract and deploy the QCOW2 image after accepting the EULA terms.
- To import the QCOW2 image on OpenStack follow these steps:
- on any Linux environment, run "IxLoad.sh -z". This will extract the QCOW2 image after accepting the EULA terms.
- copy and import the QCOW2 image in the OpenStack environment.
NOTE: when using OpenStack, the pre-configured CPU and RAM values are not used. It is recommended to specify at least 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM.
For further reference please consult the IxLoad on Linux documentation, available from IxLoad (Help section).
If before this upgrade, you have been using an IxLoad versions older than IxLoad 8.10 EA then a few manual steps will need to be performed to migrate your Reporter database:
- Open a Command Prompt
- Navigate in the Command Prompt to the root folder of the IxLoad current version installation (C:\Program Files (x86)\Ixia\IxLoad\< version >\)
- Run the reporter_migrate_db_ixload.bat script
As a result of this script, the preexisting tests results will be migrated to the current IxLoad Reporter database version.
Starting with IxLoad 9.00, running tests with any of the following capabilities: Analyzer, IPSec, SWu, HeNB, S4SWu, Untrusted WiFi Client, FTP Server, Capture Manager (part of AppReplay and IxLoad-Attack) requires installing the corresponding additional packages from IxLoad download page. These packages are required to be installed on top of the regular IxLoad client installation.
Starting IxLoad 9.00, AppLibrary Lite version is by default installed with the product. AppLibrary Lite contains basic flows to be used for testing.
In order to get the entire AppLib flows database, one needs to install additional AppLibApps.exe package that can be found on DVD or on download page.
Starting with IxLoad 9.20 release, AppLibrary and Security Captures incremental updates will be downloaded from the IxLoad Software Downloads & Documentation. Previously, these updates were received via the Update Manager application.
Tcl 8.5.17.0 is a prerequisite for using the Tcl component of IxLoad. For additional details, please refer to the IxLoad Tcl API User Guide.
The following versions of UNIX/Linux operating systems support IxLoad TCL scripting:
- Debian 10 & 11 (64bit)
- Ubuntu 10.04 & 22.04 (64bit)
Other versions of Linux and Solaris platforms may operate properly, but are not officially supported.
Installation of Tcl Server is required to support execution of Linux/UNIX-based Tcl scripts.
Please follow the link below for details to contact Keysight Support using email & phone and for business hours:
https://support.ixiacom.com/contact
The installation package for IxLoad 10.40 will automatically install the "IxLoad User Guide", and the "Getting Started with IxLoad" guide under the "Docs"
subdirectory where IxLoad is installed. The default directory is as follows:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Ixia\IxLoad\< version >\Client\Docs
Both the "IxLoad User Guide" and the "Getting Started with IxLoad" can be launched from IxLoad under the HELP menu.
Please refer to our website at IxLoad Software Downloads & Documentation.
You will be required to provide a login and password to enter this section of the web site. If you do not have the username and password,
please forward your request to support.ix@keysight.com.