[Beowulf] file IO benchmark

[Joachim Worringen]

Toon Knapen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Because the performance of our (parallel) applications is dependent on
> the disk IO bandwidth, we would like to advise our customers to run a
> 'well known' benchmark to evaluate their disk performance (before
> questioning the peformance of our soft;-).
> 
> Now my question is: what is the 'de facto' standard of disk benchmarks
> that can be run on a variety of platforms?

Would running some sort of benchmark really help you (or the customer) only 
because it is well known? I/O performance depends very much on the access style 
and pattern, and the numbers that a benchmark delivers do not necessarily 
reflect what your applications really do.

However, if you let us know what kind of I/O your applications perform, we might 
be able to recommend a benchmark with a similar access pattern. Or take a look 
at 'filebench' (http://www.solarisinternals.com/si/tools/filebench/index.php) 
which allows you to create custom "I/O profiles".

  Joachim

-- 
Joachim Worringen - NEC C&C research lab St.Augustin
fon +49-2241-9252.20 - fax .99 - http://www.ccrl-nece.de