Implementations of the present disclosure involve a system and method for simulating a storage cluster testing system. The method and system includes a processor configured to instructions stored on a memory to produce a simulation interface. The simulation interface includes an abstraction layer that receives verbs from a test driver and passes the verbs to one of two or more plugins. The plugins may include a synthetic plugin configured to translate the verbs into one or more command and send commands to a simulated storage appliance that is a computing device with relatively lower performance than an actual storage appliance. The simulated storage appliance may act in place of two storage appliances clustered to form a storage cluster. The simulated storage appliance forms a simulated storage cluster. The simulated storage cluster simulates the performance of the verb on by the storage cluster.