Tag: Response Time

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Server storage I/O performance benchmark workload scripts Part I

Server storage I/O performance benchmark workload scripts Part I

Server storage I/O performance benchmark workload scripts

Update 1/28/2018

This is part one of a two-part series of posts about Server storage I/O performance benchmark workload tools and scripts. View part II here which includes the workload scripts and where to view sample results.

There are various tools and workloads for server I/O benchmark testing, validation and exercising different storage devices (or systems and appliances) such as Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) flash Solid State Devices (SSDs) or Hard Disk Drives (HDD) among others.

NVMe ssd storage
Various NVM flash SSD including NVMe devices

For example, lets say you have an SSD such as an Intel 750 (here, here, and here) or some other vendors NVMe PCIe Add in Card (AiC) installed into a Microsoft Windows server and would like to see how it compares with expected results. The following scripts allow you to validate your system with those of others running the same workload, granted of course your mileage (performance) may vary.

server storage I/O SCM NVM SSD performance

Why Your Performance May Vary

Reasons you performance may vary include among others:

  • GHz Speed of your server, number of sockets, cores
  • Amount of main DRAM memory
  • Number, type and speed of PCIe slots
  • Speed of storage device and any adapters
  • Device drivers and firmware of storage devices and adapters
  • Server power mode setting (e.g. low or balanced power vs. high-performance)
  • Other workload running on system and device under test
  • Solar flares (kp-index) among other urban (or real) myths and issues
  • Typos or misconfiguration of workload test scripts
  • Test server, storage, I/O device, software and workload configuration
  • Versions of test software tools among others

Windows Power (and performance) Settings

Some things are assumed or taken for granted that everybody knows and does, however sometimes the obvious needs to be stated or re-stated. An example is remembering to check your server power management settings to see if they are in energy efficiency power savings mode, or, in high-performance mode. Note that if your focus is on getting the best possible performance for effective productivity, then you want to be in high performance mode. On the other hand if performance is not your main concern, instead a focus on energy avoidance, then low power mode, or perhaps balanced.

For Microsoft Windows Servers, Desktop Workstations, Laptops and Tablets you can adjust power settings via control panel and GUI as well as command line or Powershell. From command line (privileged or administrator) the following are used for setting balanced or high-performance power settings.

Balanced

powercfg.exe /setactive 381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e

High Performance

powercfg.exe /setactive 8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c

From Powershell the following set balanced or high-performance.

Balanced
PowerCfg -SetActive "381b4222-f694-41f0-9685-ff5bb260df2e"

High Performance
PowerCfg -SetActive "8c5e7fda-e8bf-4a96-9a85-a6e23a8c635c"

Note that you can list Windows power management settings using powercfg -LIST and powercfg -QUERY

server storage I/O power management

Btw, if you have not already done so, enable Windows disk (HDD and SSD) performance counters so that they appear via Task Manager by entering from a command prompt:

diskperf -y

Workload (Benchmark) Simulation Test Tools Used

There are many tools (see storageio.com/performance) that can be used for creating and running workloads just as there are various application server I/O characteristics. Different server I/O and application performance attributes include among others read vs. write, random vs. sequential, large vs. small, long vs. short stride, burst vs. sustain, cache and non-cache friendly, activity vs. data movement vs. latency vs. CPU usage among others. Likewise the number of workers, jobs, threads, outstanding and overlapped I/O among other configuration settings can have an impact on workload and results.

The four free tools that I’m using with this set of scripts are:

  • Microsoft Diskspd (free), get the tool and bits here or here (open source), learn more about Diskspd here.
  • FIO.exe (free), get the tool and bits here or here among other venues.
  • Vdbench (free with registration), get the tool and bits here or here among other venues.
  • Iometer (free), get the tool and bits here among other venues.

Notice: While best effort has been made to verify the above links, they may change over time and you are responsible for verifying the safety of links and your downloads.

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Remember, everything is not the same in the data center or with data infrastructures that support different applications.

While some tools are more robust or better than others for different things, ultimately it’s usually not the tool that results in a bad benchmark or comparison, it’s the configuration or lack of including workload settings that are not relevant or applicable. The best benchmark, workload or simulation is your own application. Second best is one that closely resembles your application workload characteristics. A bad benchmark is one that has no relevance to your environment, application use scenario. Take and treat all benchmark or workload simulation results with a grain of salt as something to compare, contrast or make reference to in the proper context. Read part two of this post series to view test tool workload scripts along with sample results.

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.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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Part 3 – Which HDD for content applicaitons – Test Configuration

Which HDD for content applications – HDD Test Configuration

HDD Test Configuration server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform hdd test configuratoin

Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the third in a multi-part series (read part two here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post the focus expands to hardware and software defining as well as configuring the test environments along with applications workloads.

Defining Hardware Software Environment

Servers Direct content platforms are software defined and hardware defined to your specific solution needs. For my test-drive, I used a pair of 2U Content Solution platforms, one for a client System Test Initiator (STI) (3), the other as server SUT shown in figure-1 (next page). With the STI configured and SUT setup Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” 12Gbps SAS HDD’s were added to the configuration.

(Note 3) System Test Initiator (STI) was hardware defined with dual Intel Xeon E5-2695 v3 (2.30 GHz) processors, 32GB RAM running Windows Server 2012 R2 with two network connections to the SUT. Network connections from the STI to SUT included an Intel GbE X540-AT2 as well as an Intel XL710 Q2 40 GbE Converged Network Adapter (CNA). In addition to software defining the STI with Windows Server 2012 R2, Dell Benchmark Factory (V7.1 64b bit 496) part of the Database Administrators (DBA) Toad Tools (including free versions) was also used. For those familiar with HammerDB, Sysbench among others, Benchmark Factory is an alternative that supports various workloads and database connections with robust reporting, scripting and automation. Other installed tools included Spotlight on Windows, Iperf 2.0.5 for generating network traffic and reporting results, as well as Vdbench with various scripts.

SUT setup (4)  included four Enterprise 10K and two 15K Performance drives with enhanced performance caching feature enabled, along with two Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s, all were attached to an internal 12Gbps SAS RAID controller. With the STI configured and SUT setup Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” 12Gbps SAS HDD’s were added to the configuration.

(Note 4) System Under Test (SUT) dual Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 (2.60 GHz) providing 54 logical processors, 64GB of RAM (expandable to 768GB with 32GB DIMMs, or 3TB with 128GB DIMMs) and two network connections. Network connections from the STI to SUT consisting of an Intel 1 GbE X540-AT2 as well as an Intel XL710 Q2 40 GbE CNA. The GbE LAN connection was used for management purposes while the 40 GbE was used for data traffic. System disk was a 6Gbs SATA flash SSD. Seagate Enterprise class HDD’s were installed into the 16 available 2.5” small form factor (SFF) drive slots. Eight (left most) drive slots were connected to an Intel RMS3CC080 12 Gbps SAS RAID internal controller. The “Blue” drives in the middle were connected to both an NVMe PCIe card and motherboard 6 Gbps SATA controller using an SFF-8637 connector. The four right most drives were also connected to the motherboard 6 Gbps SATA controller.

System Test Configuration
Figure-1 STI and SUT hardware as well as software defined test configuration

This included four Enterprise 10K and two 15K Performance drives with enhanced performance caching feature enabled, along with two Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s, all were attached to an internal 12Gbps SAS RAID controller. Five 6 Gbps SATA Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s were setup using Microsoft Windows as a spanned volume. System disk was a 6Gbps flash SSD and an NVMe flash SSD drive was used for database temp space.

What About NVM Flash SSD?

NAND flash and other Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) memory and SSD complement content solution. A little bit of flash SSD in the right place can have a big impact. The focus for theses tests is HDD’s, however some flash SSDs were used as system boot and database temp (e.g. tempdb) space. Refer to StorageIO Lab reviews and visit www.thessdplace.com

Seagate Enterprise HDD’s Used During Testing

Various Seagate Enterprise HDD specifications use in the testing are shown below in table-1.

 

Qty

 

Seagate HDD’s

 

Capacity

 

RPM

 

Interface

 

Size

 

Model

Servers Direct Price Each

Configuration

4

Enterprise 10K
Performance

1.8TB

10K with cache

12 Gbps SAS

2.5”

ST1800MM0128
with enhanced cache

$875.00 USD

HW(5) RAID 10 and RAID 1

2

Enterprise
Capacity 7.2K

2TB

7.2K

12 Gbps SAS

2.5”

ST2000NX0273

$399.00 USD

HW RAID 1

2

Enterprise 15K
Performance

600GB

15K with cache

12 Gbps SAS

2.5”

ST600MX0082
with enhanced cache

$595.00 USD

HW RAID 1

5

Enterprise
Capacity 7.2K

2TB

7.2K

6 Gbps SATA

2.5”

ST2000NX0273

$399.00 USD

SW(6) RAID Span Volume

Table-1 Seagate Enterprise HDD specification and Servers Direct pricing

URLs for additional Servers Direct content platform information:
https://serversdirect.com/solutions/content-solutions
https://serversdirect.com/solutions/content-solutions/video-streaming
https://www.serversdirect.com/File%20Library/Data%20Sheets/Intel-SDR-2P16D-001-ds2.pdf

URLs for additional Seagate Enterprise HDD information:
https://serversdirect.com/Components/Drives/id-HD1558/Seagate_ST2000NX0273_2TB_Hard_Drive

https://serversdirect.com/Components/Drives/id-HD1559/Seagate_ST600MX0082_SSHD

Seagate Performance Enhanced Cache Feature

The Enterprise 10K and 15K Performance HDD’s tested had the enhanced cache feature enabled. This feature provides a “turbo” boost like acceleration for both reads and write I/O operations. HDD’s with enhanced cache feature leverage the fact that some NVM such as flash in the right place can have a big impact on performance (7).

In addition to their performance benefit, combing a best of or hybrid storage model (combing flash with HDD’s along with software defined cache algorithms), these devices are “plug-and-play”. By being “plug-and-play” no extra special adapters, controllers, device drivers, tiering or cache management software tools are required.

(Note 5) Hardware (HW) RAID using Intel server on-board LSI based 12 Gbps SAS RAID card, RAID 1 with two (2) drives, RAID 10 with four (4) drives. RAID configured in write-through mode with default stripe / chunk size.

(Note 6) Software (SW) RAID using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (span). Hardware RAID used write-through cache (e.g. no buffering) with read-ahead enabled and a default 256KB stripe/chunk size.

(Note 7) Refer to Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy

The Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K and 15K with enhanced cache feature are a good example of how there is more to performance in today’s HDD’s than simply comparing RPM’s, drive form factor or interface.

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Careful and practical planning are key steps for testing various resources as well as aligning the applicable tools, configuration to meet your needs.

Continue reading part four of this multi-part series here where the focus expands to database application workloads.

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.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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Which Enterprise HDD for Content Applications General I/O Performance

Which HDD for Content Applications general I/O Performance

hdd general i/o performance server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform general I/O performance Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the sixth in a multi-part series (read part five here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post the focus is around general I/O performance including 8KB and 128KB IOP sizes.

General I/O Performance

In addition to running database and file (large and small) processing workloads, Vdbench was also used to collect basic small (8KB) and large (128KB) sized I/O operations. This consisted of random and sequential reads as well as writes with the results shown below. In addition to using vdbench, other tools that could be used include Microsoft Diskspd, fio, iorate and iometer among many others.

These workloads used Vdbench configured (13) to do direct I/O to a Windows file system mounted device using as much of the available disk space as possible. All workloads used 16 threads and were run concurrently similar to database and file processing tests.

(Note 13) Sample vdbench configuration for general I/O, note different settings were used for various tests

Table-7 shows workload results for 8KB random IOPs 75% reads and 75% writes including IOPs, bandwidth and response time.

 

ENT 15K RAID1

ENT 10K RAID1

ENT CAP RAID1

ENT 10K R10
(4 Drives)

ECAP SW RAID (5 Drives)

 

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

I/O Rate (IOPs)

597.11

559.26

514

475

285

293

979

984

491

644

MB/sec

4.7

4.4

4.0

3.7

2.2

2.3

7.7

7.7

3.8

5.0

Resp. Time (Sec.)

25.9

27.6

30.2

32.7

55.5

53.7

16.3

16.3

32.6

24.8

Table-7 8KB sized random IOPs workload results

Figure-6 shows small (8KB) random I/O (75% read and 25% read) across different HDD configurations. Performance including activity rates (e.g. IOPs), bandwidth and response time for mixed reads / writes are shown. Note how response time increases with the Enterprise Capacity configurations vs. other performance optimized drives.

general 8K random IO
Figure-6 8KB random reads and write showing IOP activity, bandwidth and response time

Table-8 below shows workload results for 8GB sized I/Os 100% sequential with 75% reads and 75% writes including IOPs, MB/sec and response time in seconds.

ENT 15K RAID1

ENT 10K RAID1

ENT CAP RAID1

ENT 10K R10
(4 Drives)

ECAP SW RAID (5 Drives)

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

I/O Rate (IOPs)

3,778

3,414

3,761

3,986

3,379

1,274

11,840

8,368

2,891

1,146

MB/sec

29.5

26.7

29.4

31.1

26.4

10.0

92.5

65.4

22.6

9.0

Resp. Time (Sec.)

2.2

3.1

2.3

2.4

2.7

10.9

1.3

1.9

5.5

14.0

Table-8 8KB sized sequential workload results

Figure-7 shows small 8KB sequential mixed reads and writes (75% read and 75% write), while the Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD has a large amount of space capacity, its performance in a RAID 1 vs. other similar configured drives is slower.

8KB Sequential
Figure-7 8KB sequential 75% reads and 75% write showing bandwidth activity

Table-9 shows workload results for 100% sequential, 100% read and 100% write 128KB sized I/Os including IOPs, bandwidth and response time.

ENT 15K RAID1

ENT 10K RAID1

ENT CAP RAID1

ENT 10K R10
(4 Drives)

ECAP SW RAID (5 Drives)

Read

Write

Read

Write

Read

Write

Read

Write

Read

Write

I/O Rate (IOPs)

1,798

1,771

1,716

1,688

921

912

3,552

3,486

780

721

MB/sec

224.7

221.3

214.5

210.9

115.2

114.0

444.0

435.8

97.4

90.1

Resp. Time (Sec.)

8.9

9.0

9.3

9.5

17.4

17.5

4.5

4.6

19.3

20.2

Table-9 128KB sized sequential workload results

Figure-8 shows sequential or streaming operations of larger I/O (100% read and 100% write) requests sizes (128KB) that would be found with large content applications. Figure-8 highlights the relationship between lower response time and increased IOPs as well as bandwidth.

128K Sequential
Figure-8 128KB sequential reads and write showing IOP activity, bandwidth and response time

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Some content applications are doing small random I/Os for database, key value stores or repositories as well as meta data processing while others are doing large sequential I/O. 128KB sized I/O may be large for your environment, on the other hand, with an increasing number of applications, file systems, software defined storage management tools among others, 1 to 10MB or even larger I/O sizes are becoming common. Key is selecting I/O sizes and read write as well as random sequential along with I/O or queue depths that align with your environment.

Continue reading part seven the final post in this multi-part series here where the focus is around how HDD’s continue to evolve including performance beyond traditional RPM based execrations along with wrap up.

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.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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Server Storage I/O Benchmark Performance Resource Tools

Server Storage I/O Benchmarking Performance Resource Tools

server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Server storage I/O benchmark performance resource tools, various articles and tips. These include tools for legacy, virtual, cloud and software defined environments.

benchmark performance resource tools server storage I/O performance

The best server and storage I/O (input/output operation) is the one that you do not have to do, the second best is the one with the least impact.

server storage I/O locality of reference

This is where the idea of locality of reference (e.g. how close is the data to where your application is running) comes into play which is implemented via tiered memory, storage and caching shown in the figure above.

Cloud virtual software defined storage I/O

Server storage I/O performance applies to cloud, virtual, software defined and legacy environments

What this has to do with server storage I/O (and networking) performance benchmarking is keeping the idea of locality of reference, context and the application workload in perspective regardless of if cloud, virtual, software defined or legacy physical environments.

StorageIOblog: I/O, I/O how well do you know about good or bad server and storage I/Os?
StorageIOblog: Server and Storage I/O benchmarking 101 for smarties
StorageIOblog: Which Enterprise HDDs to use for a Content Server Platform (7 part series with using benchmark tools)
StorageIO.com: Enmotus FuzeDrive MicroTiering lab test using various tools
StorageIOblog: Some server storage I/O benchmark tools, workload scripts and examples (Part I) and (Part II)
StorageIOblog: Get in the NVMe SSD game (if you are not already)
Doridmen.com: Transcend SSD360S Review with tips on using ATTO and Crystal benchmark tools
ComputerWeekly: Storage performance metrics: How suppliers spin performance specifications

Via StorageIO Podcast: Kevin Closson discusses SLOB Server CPU I/O Database Performance benchmarks
Via @KevinClosson: SLOB Use Cases By Industry Vendors. Learn SLOB, Speak The Experts’ Language
Via BeyondTheBlocks (Reduxio): 8 Useful Tools for Storage I/O Benchmarking
Via CCSIObench: Cold-cache Sequential I/O Benchmark
Doridmen.com: Transcend SSD360S Review with tips on using ATTO and Crystal benchmark tools
CISJournal: Benchmarking the Performance of Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (PDF)
Microsoft TechNet:Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing
InfoStor: What’s The Best Storage Benchmark?
StorageIOblog: How to test your HDD, SSD or all flash array (AFA) storage fundamentals
Via ATTO: Atto V3.05 free storage test tool available
Via StorageIOblog: Big Files and Lots of Little File Processing and Benchmarking with Vdbench

Via StorageIO.com: Which Enterprise Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) to use with a Content Server Platform (White Paper)
Via VMware Blogs: A Free Storage Performance Testing Tool For Hyperconverged
Microsoft Technet: Test Storage Spaces Performance Using Synthetic Workloads in Windows Server
Microsoft Technet: Microsoft Windows Server Storage Spaces – Designing for Performance
BizTech: 4 Ways to Performance-Test Your New HDD or SSD
EnterpriseStorageForum: Data Storage Benchmarking Guide
StorageSearch.com: How fast can your SSD run backwards?
OpenStack: How to calculate IOPS for Cinder Storage ?
StorageAcceleration: Tips for Measuring Your Storage Acceleration

server storage I/O STI and SUT

Spiceworks: Determining HDD SSD SSHD IOP Performance
Spiceworks: Calculating IOPS from Perfmon data
Spiceworks: profiling IOPs

vdbench server storage I/O benchmark
Vdbench example via StorageIOblog.com

StorageIOblog: What does server storage I/O scaling mean to you?
StorageIOblog: What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Testmyworkload.com: Collect and report various OS workloads
Whoishostingthis: Various SQL resources
StorageAcceleration: What, When, Why & How to Accelerate Storage
Filesystems.org: Various tools and links
StorageIOblog: Can we get a side of context with them IOPS and other storage metrics?

flash ssd and hdd

BrightTalk Webinar: Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management
StorageIOblog: Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy
StorageIOblog: Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?

server storage I/O bottlenecks and I/O blender

Microsoft TechNet: Measuring Disk Latency with Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon)
Via Scalegrid.io: How to benchmark MongoDB with YCSB? (Perfmon)
Microsoft MSDN: List of Perfmon counters for sql server
Microsoft TechNet: Taking Your Server’s Pulse
StorageIOblog: Part II: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do with VMware?
CMG: I/O Performance Issues and Impacts on Time-Sensitive Applications

flash ssd and hdd

Virtualization Practice: IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
InfoStor: Is HP Short Stroking for Performance and Capacity Gains?
StorageIOblog: Is Computer Data Storage Complex? It Depends
StorageIOblog: More storage and IO metrics that matter
StorageIOblog: Moving Beyond the Benchmark Brouhaha
Yellow-Bricks: VSAN VDI Benchmarking and Beta refresh!

server storage I/O benchmark example

YellowBricks: VSAN performance: many SAS low capacity VS some SATA high capacity?
YellowBricsk: VSAN VDI Benchmarking and Beta refresh!
StorageIOblog: Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD StorgeIO lab review
StorageIOblog: Part II: Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD StorgeIO lab review
StorageIOblog: Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games

flash ssd and hdd

VMware VDImark aka View Planner (also here, here and here) as well as VMmark here
StorageIOblog: SPC and Storage Benchmarking Games
StorageIOblog: Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
StorageIOblog: SSD and Storage System Performance

Hadoop server storage I/O performance
Various Server Storage I/O tools in a hadoop environment

Michael-noll.com: Benchmarking and Stress Testing an Hadoop Cluster With TeraSort, TestDFSIO
Virtualization Practice: SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
StorageIOblog: Storage and IO metrics that matter
InfoStor: Storage Metrics and Measurements That Matter: Getting Started
SilvertonConsulting: Storage throughput vs. IO response time and why it matters
Splunk: The percentage of Read / Write utilization to get to 800 IOPS?

flash ssd and hdd
Various server storage I/O benchmarking tools

Spiceworks: What is the best IO IOPs testing tool out there
StorageIOblog: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do?
StorageIOblog: Some Windows Server Storage I/O related commands
Openmaniak: Iperf overview and Iperf.fr: Iperf overview
StorageIOblog: Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I and Part II)
Quest: SQL Server Perfmon Poster (PDF)
Server and Storage I/O Networking Performance Management (webinar)
Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management (webinar)
Flash back to reality – Flash SSD Myths and Realities (Industry trends & benchmarking tips), (MSP CMG presentation)
DBAstackexchange: How can I determine how many IOPs I need for my AWS RDS database?
ITToolbox: Benchmarking the Performance of SANs

server storage IO labs

StorageIOblog: Dell Inspiron 660 i660, Virtual Server Diamond in the rough (Server review)
StorageIOblog: Part II: Lenovo TS140 Server and Storage I/O Review (Server review)
StorageIOblog: DIY converged server software defined storage on a budget using Lenovo TS140
StorageIOblog: Server storage I/O Intel NUC nick knack notes First impressions (Server review)
StorageIOblog & ITKE: Storage performance needs availability, availability needs performance
StorageIOblog: Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
StorageIOblog: Revisiting RAID storage remains relevant and resources

Interested in cloud and object storage visit our objectstoragecenter.com page, for flash SSD checkout storageio.com/ssd page, along with data protection, RAID, various industry links and more here.

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Watch for additional links to be added above in addition to those that appear via comments.

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.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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How much storage performance do you want vs. need?

Storage I/O trends

How much storage I/O performance do you want vs. need?

The answer to how much storage I/O performance you need vs. want probably depends on cost, for which applications along with benefit among other things.

Storage I/O performance
View Part II: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do with VMware?

I did a piece over at 21cit titled Parsing the Need for Speed in Storage that looks at those and other related themes including metrics that matter across tiered storage.

Here is an excerpt:

Can storage speed be too fast? Or, put another away, how do you decide a return on investments or innovation from the financial resources you spend on storage and the various technologies that go into storage performance.

Think about it: Fast storage needs fast servers, IO and networking interfaces, software, firmware, hypervisors, operating systems, drivers, and a file system or database, along with applications. Then there are the other buzzword bingo technologies that are also factors, among them fast storage DRAM and flash Solid State Devices (SSD).

Some questions to ask about storage I/O performance include among others:

  • How do response time, latency, and think or wait-times effect your environment and applications?
  • Do you know the location of your storage or data center performance bottlenecks?
  • If you remove bottlenecks in storage systems or appliances as well as in the data path, how will your application or the CPU in the server it runs on behave?
  • If your application server is currently showing high CPU due to the system overhead of having to wait for storage I/Os, you may see a positive improvement.
  • If more real work can be done now, will all of the components be ready to support each other without creating a new bottleneck?
  • Also speaking of storage I/O performance, how about can we get a side of context with them IOPs and other metrics that matter!

So how about it, how much performance, for primary, secondary, backup, cloud or virtual storage do you want vs. need?

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be

Storage I/O trends

Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be

In a recent conversation with Dave Raffo about the nand flash solid state disk (SSD) market, we talked about industry trends, perspectives and where the market is now as well as headed. One of my comments is, has been and will remain that the industry has still not reached anywhere near full potential for deployment of SSD for enterprise, SMB and other data storage needs. Granted, there is broad adoption in terms of discussion or conversation and plenty of early adopters.

SSD and in particular nand flash is anything but dead, in fact in the big broad picture of things, it is still very early in the game. Sure, for those who cover and crave the newest, latest and greatest technology to talk about, nand flash SSD might seem old, yesterday news, long in the tooth and time for something else. However, for those who are focused on deployment vs. adoption such as customers, in general, nand flash SSD in its many packaging options has still not yet reached its full potential.

Despite the hype, fanfare from CEOs or their evangelist along with loyal followers of startups that help drive industry adoption (e.g. what is talked about), there is still lots of upside growth in the customer drive industry deployment (actually buying, installing and using) for nand flash SSD.

What about broad customer deployments?

Sure, there are the marquee customer success stories that you need a high-capacity SAS or SATA drive to hold the YouTube videos, slide decks, press releases for.

However, have we truly, reached broad customer deployment or broad industry adoption?

Hence, I see more startups coming into the market space, and some exiting on their own, via mergers and acquisition or other means.

Will we see a feeding frenzy or IPO craze as with earlier hype cycles of technologies, IMHO there will be some companies that get the big deal, some will survive as new players running as a business vs. running to be acquired or IPO. Others will survive by evolving into something else while others will join the where are they now list.

If you are a SSD startup, CEO, CxO, or marketer, their PR, evangelist or loyal follower do not worry as the SSD market and even nand flash is far from being dead. On the other hand, if you think that it has hit its full stride, you are missing either the bigger picture, or too busy patting yourselves on the back for a job well done. There is much more opportunity out there and not even all the low hanging fruit has been picked yet.

Check out the conversation with Dave Raffo along with comments from others here.

Related links on storage IO metrics and SSD performance
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be
Storage and IO metrics that matter
IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
SSD and Storage System Performance
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) getting too big?
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part I)
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part III: What type of SSD is best for you?
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part IV: What type of SSD is best for your needs

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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More storage and IO metrics that matter

It is great to see more conversations and coverage around storage metrics that matter beyond simply focusing on cost per GByte or TByte (e.g. space capacity). Likewise, it is also good to see conversations expanding beyond data footprint reduction (DFR) from a space capacity savings or reduction ratio to also address data movement and transfer rates. Also good to see is increase in discussion around input/output operations per section (IOPs) tying into conversations from virtualization, VDI, cloud to Sold State Devices (SSD).

Other storage and IO metrics that matter include latency or response time, which is how fast work is done, or time spent. Latency also ties to IOPS in that as more work arrives to be done (IOPS) of various size, random or sequential, reads or writes, queue depths are an indicator of how well work is flowing. Another storage and IO metric that matters is availability because without it, performance or capacity can be affected. Likewise, without performance, availability can be affected.

Needless to say that I am just scratching the surface here with storage and IO metrics that matter for physical, virtual and cloud environments from servers to networks to storage.

Here is a link to a post I did called IO, IO, it is off to storage and IO metrics we go that ties in themes of performance measurements and solid-state disk (SSD) among others. Also check out this piece about why VASA (VMware storage analysis metrics) is important to have your VMware CASA along with Windows boot storage and IO performance for VDI and traditional planning purposes.

Check out this post about metrics and measurements that matter along with this conversation about IOPs, capacity, bandwidth and purchasing discussion topics.

Related links on storage IO metrics and SSD performance
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be
Storage and IO metrics that matter
IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
SSD and Storage System Performance
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) getting too big?
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching (Part I)
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part III: What type of SSD is best for you?
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part IV: What type of SSD is best for your needs

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Posted on

What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do

What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do

data infrastructure server storage I/O trends

Updated 2/10/2018

What is the best kind of IO? If no IO (input/output) operation is the best IO, than the second best IO is the one that can be done as close to the application and processor with best locality of reference. Then the third best IO is the one that can be done in less time, or at least cost or impact to the requesting application which means moving further down the memory and storage stack (figure 1).

Storage and IO or I/O locality of reference and storage hirearchy
Figure 1 memory and storage hierarchy

The problem with IO is that they are basic operation to get data into and out of a computer or processor so they are required; however, they also have an impact on performance, response or wait time (latency). IO require CPU or processor time and memory to set up and then process the results as well as IO and networking resources to move data to their destination or retrieve from where stored. While IOs cannot be eliminated, their impact can be greatly improved or optimized by doing fewer of them via caching, grouped reads or writes (pre-fetch, write behind) among other techniques and technologies.

Think of it this way, instead of going on multiple errands, sometimes you can group multiple destinations together making for a shorter, more efficient trip; however, that optimization may also take longer. Hence sometimes it makes sense to go on a couple of quick, short low latency trips vs. one single larger one that takes half a day however accomplishes many things. Of course, how far you have to go on those trips (e.g. locality) makes a difference of how many you can do in a given amount of time.

What is locality of reference?

Locality of reference refers to how close (e.g location) data exists for where it is needed (being referenced) for use. For example, the best locality of reference in a computer would be registers in the processor core, then level 1 (L1), level 2 (L2) or level 3 (L3) onboard cache, followed by dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Then would come memory also known as storage on PCIe cards such as nand flash solid state device (SSD) or accessible via an adapter on a direct attached storage (DAS), SAN or NAS device. In the case of a PCIe nand flash SSD card, even though physically the nand flash SSD is closer to the processor, there is still the overhead of traversing the PCIe bus and associated drivers. To help offset that impact, PCIe cards use DRAM as cache or buffers for data along with Meta or control information to further optimize and improve locality of reference. In other words, help with cache hits, cache use and cache effectiveness vs. simply boosting cache utilization.

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

What can you do the cut the impact of IO

  • Establish baseline performance and availability metrics for comparison
  • Realize that IOs are a fact of IT virtual, physical and cloud life
  • Understand what is a bad IO along with its impact
  • Identify why an IO is bad, expensive or causing an impact
  • Find and fix the problem, either with software, application or database changes
  • Throw more software caching tools, hyper visors or hardware at the problem
  • Hardware includes faster processors with more DRAM and fast internal busses
  • Leveraging local PCIe flash SSD cards for caching or as targets
  • Utilize storage systems or appliances that have intelligent caching and storage optimization capabilities (performance, availability, capacity).
  • Compare changes and improvements to baseline, quantify improvement

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.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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SSD and Storage System Performance

Jacob Gsoedl has a new article over at SearchStorage titled How to add solidstate storage to your enterprise data storage systems.

In his article which includes some commentary by me, Jacob lays out various options on where and how to deploy solid state devices (SSD) in and with enterprise storage systems.

While many vendors have jumped on the latest SSD bandwagon adding flash based devices to storage systems, where and how they implement the technologies varies.

Some vendors take a simplistic approach of qualify flash SSD devices for attachment to their storage controllers similar to how any other Fibre Channel, SAS or SATA hard disk drive (HDD) would be.

Yet others take a more in depth approach including optimizing controller software, firmware or micro code to leverage flash SSD devices along with addressing wear leveling, read and write performance among other capabilities.

Performance is another area where on paper a flash SSD device might appear to be fast and enable a storage system to be faster.

However, systems that are not optimized for higher throughput and or increased IOPs needing lower latency may end up placing restrictions on the number of flash SSD devices or other configuration constraints. Even worse is when expected performance improvements are not realized as after all, fast controllers need fast devices, and fast devices need fast controllers.

RAM and flash based SSD are great enabling technologies for boosting performance, productivity and enabling a green efficient environment however do your homework.

Look at how various vendors implement and support SSD particularly flash based products with enhancements to storage controllers for optimal performance.

Likewise check out the activity of  the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) among other industry trade group or vendor initiatives around enhancing along with best practices for SSD.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved