To see what kind of performance I would get out the new software raid0 array, I wanted to compare what kind of perfromance we get from disk subsystems on various machines. iozone of course doesn't show any form of random access performance but it does show sustained read and write and given the large file size involved it should eliminate any perfromance increase from cached writes...
This came about because I was pretty impressed by the performance of the new and very cheap fast disks in dolly (st34555w) joe wasn't especially impressed by the performance of the new disk system ie 12mb a second sustained write isn't that fast. I, on the other hand think it's very fast, or least in the scope of the machines I tested, it's on top by at least 2mb a second and it's nearest scsi based competitor is an individual disk from the raid array...
1. Dolly - Beowulf controll node
interleaved raid0 array of 3 st34555w 7200 rpm uw scsi disks on bt-958 uw
scsi controller tyan 1668 dual ppro 180 440fx with 128 mb of ram.
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...22.650000 seconds
Reading the file...20.980000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
11851455 bytes/second for writing the file
12794826 bytes/second for reading the file
2. Dolly - Beowulf controll node
single st34555w 7200 rpm uw scsi disk on bt958 uw scsi controller tyan
1668 dual ppro 180 440x 128 mb of ram.
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...34.860000 seconds
Reading the file...31.940000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
7700386 bytes/second for writing the file
8404366 bytes/second for reading the file
3. nsrcsparc - database server
Striped mirrored sun 4.2gb ultra scsi disks 7200 rpm (four in all) on
sparc 10/51-2 with 2 fast scsi2 controllers and 128mb of ram
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, '/b/iozone.tmp'...85.338417 seconds
Reading the file...93.374112 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
3145540 bytes/second for writing the file
2874838 bytes/second for reading the file
4. limestone - /home/ftp ftpserver
Single Quantum atlas II XP34300W 4.2gb 7200rpm uw scsi disk on adaptec
2940uw controller on asus p55p54npd dual pentium 100 430hx 64mb ram
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...57.760000 seconds
Reading the file...51.790000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
4647428 bytes/second for writing the file
5183152 bytes/second for reading the file
5. twin - My desktop linux box
single quantum fireball VP32210 2gb 4500rpm fast scsi2 disk adaptec 2940u
ultra controller on asus p55p54npd dual pentium 133 430hx 64mb of ram.
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...98.800000 seconds
Reading the file...69.350000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
2716958 bytes/second for writing the file
3870734 bytes/second for reading the file
6. twin - my desktop linux box
single st41650 seagate elite 1.6gb 3500rpm scsi2 disk (5 1/4" fh)
adaptec 2940u ultra controller on asus p55p54npd dual pentium 133 430hx
64mb of ram.
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, '/mnt/disk2/iozone.tmp'...134.160000 seconds
Reading the file...95.470000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
2000860 bytes/second for writing the file
2811725 bytes/second for reading the file
7. golden-gate - pete's desktop linux box
Single fujitsu M1606S-512 2gb 5400rpm fast scsi2 disk adaptec 1542 isa
fast scsi2 controller on tyan tomcat 4 dual pentium 100 430hx 96 mb of ram
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...391.470000 seconds
Reading the file...277.030000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
685711 bytes/second for writing the file
968976 bytes/second for reading the file
8. d34-225 - my desktop win95 box booted into linux
Single Western digital AC35100L 5gb 5400rpm DMA mode 4 ide disk on tyan
1682 single pentium-II 233 dma mode 3 (22mb/sec signaling rate support) 64
mb of ram.
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...28.700000 seconds
Reading the file...28.770000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
9353151 bytes/second for writing the file
9330394 bytes/second for reading the file
9. refract - cuseeme server (linux)
Single micropolis 1548-15MZ1077811 4500rpm scsi2 5 1/4" fh on adaptec 2740
eisa fast scsi 2 controller Dell 486/dx50 motherboard with 16mb ram
Writing the 64 Megabyte file, 'iozone.tmp'...26.790000 seconds
Reading the file...21.770000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
2504996 bytes/second for writing the file
3082630 bytes/second for reading the file
10. darkwing - our main faculty computing box
single unknown scsi disk (/tmp on darkwing) ;) immediatly after reboot 20
users on line. on sparc server 1000 with 1.5 gb ram
Writing the 64 Megabyte file, '/tmp/test.tmp'...24.930745 seconds
Reading the file...8.967050 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
2691811 bytes/second for writing the file
7483940 bytes/second for reading the file
11. ns - network services
single 4.2gb seagate barracuda ultra wide on sun fast/wide controller on
sun ultra-170 creator with 128mb ram.
Writing the 64 Megabyte file, '/disk3/test.tmp'...10.370117 seconds
Reading the file...10.125260 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
6471369 bytes/second for writing the file
6627865 bytes/second for reading the file
12. twin - my desktop linux box
single 9.1GB seagate barracuda st39173w on adaptec 2940u ultra narrow
controller in dual ppro 200 96mb ram.
Writing the 256 Megabyte file, '/mnt/foo/temp.test'...31.200000 seconds
Reading the file...32.470000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
8603700 bytes/second for writing the file
8267183 bytes/second for reading the file
13. limestone - ftp server
single 9.1 gb seagate barracuda st39173w on adaptec 2940uw ultra wide controller in dual p-100, 64 mb ram.
Writing the 128 Megabyte file, '/home/ftp/users/joelja/output.txt'...27.850000 seconds
Reading the file...19.240000 seconds
IOZONE performance measurements:
4819308 bytes/second for writing the file
6975973 bytes/second for reading the file
This test however turned up some interesting results. It says that If you're willing to live with the cpu hit that western digital ultra dma ide disks can outperform nearly any other disk on the market and at a relative fraction of the cost (in terms of raw io) ide has it's own problems however since it's preformance is very cpu dependant.
In any event this is in no way complete, I'd like to build it for alpha and test it on a couple machines, I'd also like to test some more ide configs. It's pretty clear at this point that sun workstations are in no danger of outperforming pc's even on single disks anytime soon. I'd also like to test more scsi controllers on pc's I just need to hang disks off of them to do it.