then it was worth testing it. thank you for your interrest.

Hi,

so here are my test results. So that´s a productive environment with 16VMs on 3LUNs and 10VMs on local storage from the ESX Hosts. For the test I take a forth free LUN with 600GB and 265 segment size. So I´m new to the whole storage and IOps thing but I see that my performance isn´t very good. First i thought it´s my raid6 but then i saw the tests from sima3 which are much better.

Is there a difference between XP and 2003 for IOMeter tests? Does anyone have some tips for me? Thanks

SERVER TYPE: VM Windows XP, 2GB RAM
CPU TYPE / NUMBER: 2 VCPU
HOST TYPE: IBM x3650, 18GB RAM, 2x 5430, 2,6 GHz QC
STORAGE TYPE / DISK NUMBER / RAID LEVEL: IBM DS3400 (1024MB CACHE/Dual Cntr) 11x SAS 15k 300GB / R6
SAN TYPE / HBAs : FC, QLA2432 HBA

##################################################################################
TEST NAME-------------------Av. Resp. Time ms------Av. IOs/sek-------Av. MB/sek------
##################################################################################

Max Throughput-100%Read_____20_____2925_____91

RealLife-60%Rand-65%Read_____173_____345_____2

Max Throughput-50%Read_____35_____1687_____52

Random-8k-70%Read_____211_____283_____2

##################################################################################

regards

Sebastian

Hi again,

after tfapps gave me the AV tip I created a new VM with 2003 and wow my storage is fast. Here are my new results.

SERVER TYPE: VM Windows 2003, 1GB RAM
CPU TYPE / NUMBER: 1 VCPU
HOST TYPE: IBM x3650, 18GB RAM, 2x 5430, 2,6 GHz QC
STORAGE TYPE / DISK NUMBER / RAID LEVEL: IBM DS3400 (1024MB CACHE/Dual Cntr) 11x SAS 15k 300GB / R6
SAN TYPE / HBAs : FC, QLA2432 HBA

##################################################################################
TEST NAME-------------------Av. Resp. Time ms------Av. IOs/sek-------Av. MB/sek------
##################################################################################

Max Throughput-100%Read_____5_____11010_____344

RealLife-60%Rand-65%Read_____20_____1642_____12

Max Throughput-50%Read_____11_____5029_____157

Random-8k-70%Read_____20_____1790_____13

##################################################################################

Does anybody know how i can use the IOMeter to get the current IOps from a system? With the Idle Specification maybe? I wanna check some Notes and DB2 servers which are physical.

Thanks

Sebi

SERVER TYPE: Windows XP VM w/ 1GB RAM on ESXi 4
CPU TYPE / NUMBER: VCPU / 1
HOST TYPE: Sun SunFire x4150, 48GB RAM; 2x XEON E5450, 2.992 GHz
STORAGE TYPE / DISK NUMBER / RAID LEVEL: Two EQL PS6000E's with / 14+2 SATA Disks / R50

##################################################################################
TEST NAME-------------------Av. Resp. Time ms------Av. IOs/sek-------Av. MB/sek------
##################################################################################

Max Throughput-100%Read….….15.025.……….…3915.89….....…..122.37

RealLife-60%Rand-65%Read……12.20..…..…..….3324.92.…..…….25.97

Max Throughput-50%Read….……13.18..………….4460.97….…..….139.40

Random-8k-70%Read….….….…..13.40….………..3033.14….…..…..23.69

EXCEPTIONS: CPU%= 44 - 66 - 40 - 63

Using iscsi w/ software initiator. 4 nics, each with a vmkernel assigned to it.

##################################################################################

This is from my pair of Equallogic PS6000E's.

The test was performed on a virtual disk that had not been formatted with NTFS.

I'm not sure if this was the right way to go about doing this test, or whether it should have been formatted with NTFS first.

Do these numbers seem right?

first test on new esx4.0, results as expected in compare to old tests with esx3.

SERVER TYPE:

Win2k8 64bit SP1 VM (4GB RAM, 100GB vmdk) on ESX 4.0

CPU TYPE /
NUMBER: VCPU / 4

HOST TYPE: HP
DL380G6 - 60GB RAM - 2x Xeon5560 2.8GHz Quadcore

STORAGE TYPE /
DISK NUMBER / RAID LEVEL: Equallogic PS3700X / 16x 400GB 10k 3,5" SAS /
Raid 50
SAN TYPE / HBAs : iSCSI; 3x vmk <-> 3x GB pNIC (3 different Intel ET 1000
Quad Port), Jumbo Frames, vmware Round Robin

##################################################################################
TEST NAME-------------------Av. Resp. Time ms------Av. IOs/sek-------Av.
MB/sek------
##################################################################################

Max Throughput-100%Read 14.3370 4169.41 130.18
VMWare shows 140MB read on that vmhba while
benchmark running
RealLife-60%Rand-65%Read 13.9840 3302.82 25.80
Max Throughput-50%Read 12.5621 4768.15 149.00
Random-8k-70%Read 14.8072 3104.66 24.26

EXCEPTIONS: CPU Util.-10-5-5-10%

Your results are similar (but slighly below) to those I had on a syncmirrored pair of EVA6400's with 23 and 48 disks here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/197844?start=90&tstart=0

Do you have any HP agents installed on your ESX hosts? It seems they will per default issue scsi reservations every 60 seconds that will affect your performance negatively.

See here: http://docs.hp.com/en/5991-2731/ch02s04.html

hpimafcad polls the FC hbas which in turn results in scsi reservations.

Lars

Sorry for the ignorance. I am very new to IOMETER and I'm really trying to understand how to run these tests. Few questions...

1. When running these tests from inside a VM, should I be running them on a yellow icon (the VMs drive c: drive itself), or should I be creating a new unformatted drive that will show up in blue? Are people standardizing here?

2. Should I be using the .ICF file from the "original" storage performance thread?

3. When running these tests, are people running them on LUNs in production with VMs on them? Off-hours so disk activity is minimal? For example, my ESX box is connected to a iSCSI SAN with a single LUN/'Datastore on it that has 10 VMs. Should I just run the tests during normal hours? Or are people shutting down all VMs on the Datastore before running these, etc.??

4. I am really confused about the results people are posting. Everyone lists a Av. IOs/sek column, and a Av. MB/sek column, but I don't even see those in my csv results file (??). Are those the same as Total I/O's per second and Total MB's per second in my spreadsheet? If not, where am I supposed to look?

5. Which of the 4 tests are the best idea for how overall VM performance would be?

Sorry for the ignorance.