Our on-site lab provides a robust simulated enterprise environment where RKON—together with our customers and partners—test how technology can be applied to real-world customer uses for application service delivery. The lab provides a place to precisely control factors like unit cost, integration points, and user experience that ultimately drive the viability of a solution. Our lab is a safe place to test different approaches to customer challenges with a toolset of multiple technologies.

Functions of the Lab

1. Customer Deployment Proof of Concept (POC) and Simulation: RKON provides our customers an environment to test and simulate both functionality and migrations.
2. Problem Simulation: RKON’s Support team leverages the lab to simulate problems and issues for testing on non-production systems.
3. Evaluations: Our clients to use the lab to evaluate our demonstrations of live systems in the early stages of design.
4. Research and Development: RKON leverages the lab for vendor beta testing for many of our partners including Citrix, Micrsoft, NetApp, Appsense, Checkpoint, Riverbed, F5, and Juniper. Everything from new feature releases to major upgrades are tested and proofed out before our customers invest.

Lab Scenarios

Server Virtualization Capabilities: Simulation of multiple workloads up to 50 concurrent workloads back-ended by a 10TB NetApp SANs.

1. VMware, Hyper-V, or Citrix XenServer workloads
2. Salability testing
3. Performance testing
4. Convergence testing
5. Capability testing
6. Disaster Recovery and fail-over testing

Desktop Virtualization Capabilities: Simulation of XenDesktop for up to 60 concurrent back-ended by 10TB of NetApp.

1. Application compatibility testing including Video, CAD using HDX plugin
2. IOPPS testing for scalability
3. Provisioning of desktops using Citrix Provisioning Server
4. AppSense integration
5. Liquidware for ongoing performance monitoring
6. Show endpoint connectivity with IPADs and Wyse terminals
7. Remote office simulation leveraging Citrix Branch Repeaters

Wan Optimization Capabilities: Full simulation of multiple WAN locations using Citrix or Riverbed.

1. Simulated data center to a remote office with customizable bandwidth sizes
2. Application simulation for response time capture and traffic patterns
3. Back up simulation and back up consolidation simulation
4. SAN replication across WAN links

Traffic Management Simulations: Global traffic management and local traffic simulations with F5 and Citrix Load balancers.

1. Server load balancing simulation
2. Site load balancing with site failure and secondary site failover

Security Simulations.

1. Checkpoint Firewall Appliance performance and upgrade testing: Most appliances, Provider One
2. Checkpoint R70 Blade Testing: Application Control Blade, Identity Awareness, DLP, Mobile Access, SSL VPN
3. SSL VPN Testing: Full performance testing of F5, Citrix, Juniper, and Checkpoint SSL systems
4. Websense: Web content Filtering and DLP
5. Tipping Point

Private Labs

Available upon request for your next POC. Utilize our high-tech, on-site lab, which is equip with a 42-U Rack layout with dual-power and battery backup. The configuration mimics the exact rack environment in a traditional data center. All equipment is rack-mounted where appropriate. Power and cooling needs are taken into consideration during design and testing.