Generic HW Burn-in Testing

[Redbeard78]

Hi, I want to start stress testing all of our newly delivered hardware before deployment. I realize there are many role-specific applications out there for load/stress testing, however we're looking for generic pre-OS hardware testing. Ideally it would boot from a CD, and put maximum load on all parts: CPU, RAM, RAID card, local disks, NICs, HBAs, etc, for a configurable length of time: 1 hour, 2 hours, 12 hours. Then you could save the report to a thumbdrive. Anyone know of anything?

I guess you could also call it out-of-the-box stressing for new servers. If it passes that test, then you could load an OS and application, then start more specific performance benchmarking, like VMmark.

[kjb007 · Accepted solution]

One quick thing that comes to mind are the hardware diagnostic utilities. They should be configurable as far as length and can be run for an extended amount of time. While they won't necesarilly stress your system, they should exercise each component for you.

Passmark makes a tool as well that is cost effective: http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm

-KjB

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your post has been moved to the Enterprise Strategy and Planning forum

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

PS - take a look www.memtest.org/ for the memory portion.

[Redbeard78]

Thank you, Passmark BurnInTest is where my own research today has brought me, too. You can build it into a BartPE disk or a Slax LiveCD and save the reports to thumbdrive. There are some testing limitations in that environment, listed in their FAQ, but this us take a long way in the right direction.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I generally do the following:

Setup System BIOS appropriately for ESX

Run memtest86+ for at least 24 hours

Run hardware vendor full diagnostics for at least 24 hours

Some vendors have other diags/load test suites.. .HP has Meat Grinder for example. I would run that as well for at least 24 hours, etc.

However if your vendor does not have a good load test suite Passmark sounds like the way to go after the other tests.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[azn2kew]

Add on to Texiwill, I would fully loaded ESX hosts and deploy couple VMs store locally on disk and run for 48 hours make sure nothing crashes and then put into production after thorough hardware diagnostic and memtest. You can run memory leak utility from service console as well.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant