How to test your HDD SSD or all flash array (AFA) storage fundamentals

How to test your HDD SSD AFA Hybrid or cloud storage

Updated 2/14/2018

Over at BizTech Magazine I have a new article 4 Ways to Performance Test Your New HDD or SSD that provides a quick guide to verifying or learning what the speed characteristic of your new storage device are capable of.

An out-take from the article used by BizTech as a "tease" is:

Building off the basics, server storage I/O benchmark fundamentals

The four basic steps in the article are:

• Plan what and how you are going to test (what’s applicable for you)
• Decide on a benchmarking tool (learn about various tools here)
• Test the test (find bugs, errors before a long running test)
• Focus on metrics that matter (what’s important for your environment)

Where To Learn More

View additional NAS, NVMe, SSD, NVM, SCM, Data Infrastructure and HDD related topics via the following links.

• StorageIO Podcast: Kevin Closson discusses SLOB Server CPU I/O Database Performance benchmarks
• @KevinClosson: SLOB Use Cases By Industry Vendors. Learn SLOB, Speak The Experts’ Language
• Can we get a side of context with them IOPS and other storage metrics?
• WHEN AND WHERE TO USE NAND FLASH SSD FOR VIRTUAL SERVERS
• Revisiting RAID storage remains relevant and resources
• NVMe overview and primer – Part I
• Part 1 of HDD for content servers series Trends and Content Application Servers
• Part 2 of HDD for content servers series Content application server decisions and testing plans
• Part 3 of HDD for content servers series Test hardware and software configuration
• Part 4 of HDD for content servers series Large file I/O processing
• Part 5 of HDD for content servers series Small file I/O processing
• Part 6 of HDD for content servers series General I/O processing
• Part 7 of HDD for content servers series How HDD continue to evolve over different generations and wrap up
• As the platters spin, HDD’s for cloud, virtual and traditional storage environments
• How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do?
• Hard Disk Drives (HDD) for Virtual Environments
• Server and Storage I/O performance and benchmarking tools
• Server storage I/O performance benchmark workload scripts Part I and Part II
• How to test your HDD, SSD or all flash array (AFA) storage fundamentals
• What is the best server storage I/O workload benchmark? It depends
• I/O, I/O how well do you know about good or bad server and storage I/Os?
• Big Files Lots of Little File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench
• Part II – NVMe overview and primer (Different Configurations)
• Part III – NVMe overview and primer (Need for Performance Speed)
• Part IV – NVMe overview and primer (Where and How to use NVMe)
• Part V – NVMe overview and primer (Where to learn more, what this all means)
• PCIe Server I/O Fundamentals
• If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?
• NVMe Wont Replace Flash By Itself
• Via Computerweekly – NVMe discussion: PCIe card vs U.2 and M.2
• Intel and Micron unveil new 3D XPoint Non Volatie Memory (NVM) for servers and storage
• Part II – Intel and Micron new 3D XPoint server and storage NVM
• Part III – 3D XPoint new server storage memory from Intel and Micron
• Server storage I/O benchmark tools, workload scripts and examples (Part I) and (Part II)
• Data Infrastructure Overview, Its Whats Inside of Data Centers
• All You Need To Know about Remote Office/Branch Office Data Protection Backup (free webinar with registration)
• Software Defined, Converged Infrastructure (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) resources
• The SSD Place (SSD, NVM, PM, SCM, Flash, NVMe, 3D XPoint, MRAM and related topics)
• The NVMe Place (NVMe related topics, trends, tools, technologies, tip resources)
• Data Protection Diaries (Archive, Backup/Restore, BC, BR, DR, HA, RAID/EC/LRC, Replication, Security)
• Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) including SDDC, Cloud, Container and more
• Various Data Infrastructure related events, webinars and other activities
• www.objectstoragecenter.com and Software Defined, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals
• Server Storage I/O Network PCIe Fundamentals

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

What This All Means

To some the above (read the full article here) may seem like common sense tips and things everybody should know otoh there are many people who are new to servers storage I/O networking hardware software cloud virtual along with various applications, not to mention different tools.

Thus the above is a refresher for some (e.g. Dejavu) while for others it might be new and revolutionary or simply helpful. Interested in HDD’s, SSD’s as well as other server storage I/O performance along with benchmarking tools, techniques and trends check out the collection of links here (Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking and Performance Resources).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

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