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Iometer 2008.08.18 (Read Transfer)
For the enthusiast crowd and enterprise, I have included IOMeter which allows for configurable dataset test file sizes. We have set the test file to 8gb, so you can see the results are without cache leverage. There are going to be a “few” screens displayed so your patience is appreciated as a few shots are just showing the massive amounts of IOPS that this system is capable of. In some cases, we had to use several workers to spread the load over the different cores of the processor, due to Iometer limitations. 1 worker with the 4k random testing would only push results so high as we were reaching processor limitations.
The workload generated by IOMeter is unfortunately limited to only 1 core and it does not multithread well. The CPU usage numbers presented by Iometer in these screenshots are not truly representative of the CPU loading; it is counting all 4 cores (8 virtual) and is not illustrating that each individual core is at 100% loading. This was a particularly vexing issue as, in all previous RAID cards that I have tested, I have never ran against this limitation to this degree. The only way around this is to use more workers which is, of course, a testament to the sheer power of this card!
The first is sequential bandwidth (2657.65 mb/s) tested with a 64mb file and 64 queue depth.
4K random, 1 worker, QD 128. 1011.60 MBs !
4k random read, 2 workers, QD 128
And with 4k random, 3 workers, qd 128 we are really starting to push on the limits here…
LINKED INDEX
INTRODUCTION ~ EXTERNAL CHARACTERISTICS ~ BENCHMARK PREP
ATTO/CRYSTAL ~ AS SSD ~ HDTUNE PRO ~ WEI/AIDA ~ IOMETER
PASSMARK ~ VANTAGE ~ CONCLUSIONS AND THOUGHTS
If you want more detailed information on the testing, parameters and configurations used in testing, feel free to hit the forums! I will be happy to answer any questions, and as long as I have the hardware, if there is anything I have missed, I would be happy to run some tests for you and there will also be some more detailed presentations on 4k scaling for you enthusiasts out there 🙂 ~ Paul