Disk Performance Benchmarking

[Paul Lussier]

"Kenny Lussier" <klussier at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi All,
>
> I am looking for a tool that will centrally test the performance of
> several disk sub-systems in my environment. 

bonnie++, iozone, countless others.

There's a decent performance test tool matrix here:
  http://ltp.sourceforge.net/tooltable.php

We found IOZone to be easier to deal with than bonnie++
(http://www.iozone.org/), but that was strictly for out needs at the
time.  I have in the past used bonnie(++) for other needs.  

Be sure to look at all the tools and determine exactly what
information you're trying to determine.  Iow, what questions do you
want answered.

"Disk performance" will vary depending upon application, use, speed of
drive, buffering, caching, file system layouts, etc.

The same disk (disk system) can perform very differently under the
same load by simply changing the file system.  Raw disk will perform
very differently than one with any type of file system, etc.

And file systems perform very differently depending upon all those
factors and their various settings.  For example, reiserfs performs
very differently when tail-packing is turned on vs. turning it off.
-- 
Seeya,
Paul