Disk IO benchmarking

[Mark Komarinski]

On 01/17/2008 11:02 AM, Sarunas wrote:
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> Hi,
>
> I'm building a new system and would like to use that chance to do some
> disk I/O performance testing: Linux software RAID vs. 3ware hardware
> RAID and different RAID-x arrangements with SATA drives. Debian Etch or
> Ubuntu Hardy, amd64, ext3 filesystem. Until now I was using bonnie++,
> dbench and hdparm... Would there be any suggestions for other
> benchmarking tools? Other tests?
>   
bonnie++ is pretty good at testing, we used it at $EMPLOYER for doing 
similar comparisons a few years ago.

Depending on the CPU speed, you may find that software RAID is faster 
than hardware RAID as we did way back when.  We stuck with a hardware 
card mostly for ease of setup, administration, and how easy it was to 
locate and replace failed drives - it's not as easy to do with software 
RAID-based systems.

-Mark