This thread is locked
This time I've done a bit different test. This test has been done on a production system to a SAN that has a few servers connected (windows, pSeries, esx). The tested VM was the only active one in this LUN, but the array was shared with quite a few systems. The general load generated from other systems were however fairly low at this time of the night. I've also attached a few screen shots of the stats collected during the test.
The cpu stats I've reported has always been the load reported by iometer. Here is also attached a graph from the esx side (as collected by a VM that had some timing problems), and also storage stats taken from both the san and the esx server.
SERVER TYPE: Virtual Windows 2003sp2 Enterprise on ESX 3.0.2.
CPU TYPE / NUMBER: VCPU / 1
HOST TYPE: IBM X3755, 24 GB RAM; 2x Opteron 8218, 2,6 GHz, DC - 22 running VMs
STORAGE TYPE / DISK NUMBER / RAID LEVEL: IBM DS4500 / 2xEmulex LPe11000 4Gb FC adapters/ 9x146GB disks / raid 5/ vmfs 2MB block size
EXCEPTIONS: CPU Util. 100% 51% 84% 47%
Message was edited by: larstr
Image upload as attachments to the message failed. Thumbnails too, so I had to include pictures directly into the message.Sorry about that.
The cpu stats I've reported has always been the load reported by iometer. Here is also attached a graph from the esx side (as collected by a VM that had some timing problems), and also storage stats taken from both the san and the esx server.
SERVER TYPE: Virtual Windows 2003sp2 Enterprise on ESX 3.0.2.
CPU TYPE / NUMBER: VCPU / 1
HOST TYPE: IBM X3755, 24 GB RAM; 2x Opteron 8218, 2,6 GHz, DC - 22 running VMs
STORAGE TYPE / DISK NUMBER / RAID LEVEL: IBM DS4500 / 2xEmulex LPe11000 4Gb FC adapters/ 9x146GB disks / raid 5/ vmfs 2MB block size
| TEST NAME | Av. Resp. Time ms | Av. IOs/sek | Av. MB/sek |
| Max Throughput-100%Read. | 10.6 | 5315 | 166 |
| RealLife-60%Rand-65%Read | 76 | 606 | 4.7 |
| Max Throughput-50%Read | 7.5 | 6710 | 209 |
| Random-8k-70%Read. | 53 | 796 | 6.2 |
EXCEPTIONS: CPU Util. 100% 51% 84% 47%
Message was edited by: larstr
Image upload as attachments to the message failed. Thumbnails too, so I had to include pictures directly into the message.Sorry about that.
I must admit that for me this thread is one of the most valuable around. Thanks for starting it, Christian! 
During VMworld there was however also a very good session on the topic of storage performance. It showed a few very interesting results regarding queue depths and the impact of connecting different numbers of esx servers to the san controllers (with equal number of VMs).
The pdf is currently only available for VMworld attendies. Information about the session is as follows:
"
ID: IP42
Session: ESX Storage Performance - A Scalability Study
Presenter: VMware
In this talk, we will present actual performance results of the ESX Server storage subsystem with an emphasis on scalability in distributed environments. The scalability results collected on a 64-host blade cluster with shared storage will be covered for multiple use cases:
Distributed storage performance for IO intensive workloads - Covers performance results of various IO block sizes and access patterns with an aim to understand the steady-state scalability, responsiveness and fairness of ESX Server storage.
Distributed boot-up performance - Covers boot-up performance of a large number of VMs, helping us understand scalability of massively simultaneous file operations and small IO.
Scalable consistency management - Covers performance results of metadata management with advanced distributed locking.
Desktop workload performance - Covers performance of VMFS snapshots which enable Scalable Image management, also covering desktop scenarios.
"
Lars
During VMworld there was however also a very good session on the topic of storage performance. It showed a few very interesting results regarding queue depths and the impact of connecting different numbers of esx servers to the san controllers (with equal number of VMs).
The pdf is currently only available for VMworld attendies. Information about the session is as follows:
"
ID: IP42
Session: ESX Storage Performance - A Scalability Study
Presenter: VMware
In this talk, we will present actual performance results of the ESX Server storage subsystem with an emphasis on scalability in distributed environments. The scalability results collected on a 64-host blade cluster with shared storage will be covered for multiple use cases:
Distributed storage performance for IO intensive workloads - Covers performance results of various IO block sizes and access patterns with an aim to understand the steady-state scalability, responsiveness and fairness of ESX Server storage.
Distributed boot-up performance - Covers boot-up performance of a large number of VMs, helping us understand scalability of massively simultaneous file operations and small IO.
Scalable consistency management - Covers performance results of metadata management with advanced distributed locking.
Desktop workload performance - Covers performance of VMFS snapshots which enable Scalable Image management, also covering desktop scenarios.
"
Lars
