RAID, bm and bonnie Benchmarks


ATTENTION: For professional reasons I'm no longer directly involved with RAID systems and for that reason am not able to follow its development directly. This page is popular and I think useful and informative, and allthough I'm still trying to maintain it I'd be very happy to pass maintenance of this page on to some interested human being. If you are interested then please contact me at tpo_hp at sourcepole.ch.

This page started with a few RAID benches. Allthough I'm still interested in RAID system performances (mainly RAID5 with Linux, because that's what we use here) I have begun including non-RAID benchmarks. The reason for it is to find out which combinations of HW/software/config yield good results as internet servers. It is clear that the combination of bonnie and bm (Byte Benchmark) as benchmarks don't permit any real conclusion on the performance of an internet server, but they give at least some numbers and can at least be used to find out what relevance which components have on performance.

If you do bonnie benches with high performance RAID or non-RAID systems on your own, I'd be happy to include them here. Please include at least the following info: processor, RAM, system version, RAID config (if ever), HD types and numbers. Note that for bonnie benchmarks it doesn't really make sense if the size of your RAM is comparable to the size of the bonnie work-file. See the note by Linas. Suggestions and comments are very wellcome: mailme at tpo_hp at sourcepole.ch.

If you are looking for further RAID reading check out Linas' RAID Solutions for Linux pages that includes more links and info. And also Russel Coker's bonnie++ page, that also includes a few benchmark results.

Unless otherwise noted, the benches were performed by myself

If you want to speed up your system, you might want to think about using hdparm.

bonnie Results

Linas Vepstas writes a thing which make the 100MB bonnies at least questionable:
Note that a 100MB test on a 256 MB machine is invalid: you are measuring memory performance, not disk performance, as there will be *no* disk activity because of (a) the Linux file system cache, and (2) Linux disk write buffering.

For a 256M machine, I suggest at least a 1G test, although a 2 or 3 G test would be better.


Config
              -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
              -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU 
P200, 64M, NEC DSE1700A
tpo's     100  2906 90.2  4217 42.9  1802 43.7  2352 81.2  4742 75.6  51.5  5.4
K6 233, 64M, 8 GB Maxtor 88455D8
IDE       100  2425 93.6  6169 24.2  2997 21.5  2454 91.8 10872 24.5  73.5  1.7
with soft RAID0 o. 4x8 GB Max.88455D8
RAID-0    100  2252 87.5 10720 25.6  4346 21.9  2550 94.4 18052 39.7 136.8  3.1
Dual PPro 200, 64M, Cheetah
Cheetah   100  2890 95.6 11156 50.4  3847 29.1  2622 91.0 12845 31.2 253.7  6.6
AMD P5 200, 16M, IBM-DCAA-34330
ruben's   100  4116 38.0  4349 15.0  2417 15.7  2617 22.1  4254 10.4  46.9  1.4 
Ultra/143 HW-RAID write-through
RAID5     100  3205 46.6  3490  9.0  2751  9.9  5077 95.0 19314 27.8 609.7 12.3 
Ultra/143 HW-RAID write-back
RAID 5    100  5922 86.1  5967 15.6  4106 14.5  5277 97.9 20341 28.5 968.3 19.3 
Ultra/143 fast/narrow
ST32171N  100  6465 97.9  8610 21.1  4418 15.8  5032 97.4 22664 31.6 288.3 5.8 
Ultra1/143 fast/wide
IBM34330W 100  6681 97.4  7474 18.5  3707 12.9  5248 96.9 22575 30.3 275.5 5.3 
PPro 200, GDT RAID5 o. 3 ST34572W
fetty     100  6552 89.8 15329 53.6  2594 20.0  3240 36.2 62023 87.8 7630.4 99.2
PPro 200, GDT RAID5 o. 3 DCAS-3433OW
fetty-i   100  7599 97.5 22763 74.7  6673 43.5  2784 30.6 82875 67.2 6908.2 98.4 
same 2nd test
fetty-i   100  7393 93.7 25898 83.5  7175 46.7  2590 29.5 130967 99.8 6535.0 88.2
2*P3 450, DAC960PD, 5 IBM DNES-318350Y 18G SCSI
DAC960pd  100  6350 87.9  7311  5.6  4287  9.3  7385 100.0 270706 100.5 14356.2 201.0
HP-PA 7100LC w. ST
          128  2320       3939       1064       1903        3493        75,8     
same w. IBM
          128  3485       4087       1657       2880        3462        70,8     
PPro-200, 64M
          128  3163       4251       1735       2623        3355        60       
P166, 64M
          128  4676       4373       1785       3745        4825        44       
AMD K5-PR166, 64M
          128  5016       3912       1788       4613        4426        43       
AMD K6-PR233, 128M
          256  2143       2766       1130       2188        2902        47       
same with RAID0
          256  7627      10595       3695       6178       11250        94.6     
AMD K6-PR200, 128M
          256  3967       5233       2359       5083        5967        67       
DEC Alpha 21164@600MHz
          256  3395       3677       1795       4197        4286        65.4     
same w. IBM on SCSI
          256  3574       4410       1746       3498        4221        76.3     
same w. Micropolis
          256  3574       4410       1746       3498        4221        76.3     
same w. IBM
          256  4333       5542       2156       4643        5317        57.0     
Cyrix 486 120, 16M, soft RAID0
sfirst    800   765 90.0  1414 77.9   620 61.7   776 92.6  1169 55.5  14.0  5.1
PPro 200, GDT RAID5 o. 3 DCAS-3433OW
fetty-i   800  2554 35.8  3556 17.4  1968 15.6  6789 64.2  9870 18.9  76.2  2.2
P233, 64M, 9GB IBM
backup    800  2887 97.0  6747 31.9  3597 31.0  3135 95.2 13644 52.0  56.3  2.1
PII233, 128M, RAID5
mail      800  2125 50.9  2974  9.4  2280 11.4  4503 92.7 10469 16.3  88.3  2.2
same with 64M and 2.0.33
mail      800  4137 96.9  3033  7.9  2579 12.1  4481 91.6 10843 17.4  81.1  2.1
P233, 128M, soft RAID0 o. 2 EID
p-sargans 800  7037 90.8 12239 74.9  2882 30.2  4975 53.1  5576 24.7  37.1  2.0
PII 266 Quant.XP32275W
p-thusis  800  8658 86.6  8870 26.0  3208 14.4  7656 51.6  7345 10.4  36.7  0.4
PII 266 soft RAID0 o. Quant.XP32275W
p-thusis  800  9131 90.9 15203 47.5  2743 15.3  9900 70.8 10378 22.2  38.9  1.1
DPT 3 disks
DPT3x4G  1000  1914 20.0  1985  2.8  1704  6.5  5559 86.7 12857 15.6  97.1  1.8
DPT 6 disks
DPT6x4G  1000  2246 23.4  2371  3.4  1890  7.1  5610 87.3  9381 10.9 112.1  1.9
soft RAID5 3 disks
SOF3x4G  1000  7312 76.2 10908 15.5  5757 20.2  5434 86.4 14728 19.9  69.3  1.5
soft RAID5 6 disks
SOF6x4G  1000  7530 76.8 16991 32.0  7861 39.9  5763 90.7 23246 49.6 145.4  3.7
soft RAID5 8 disks
SOF8x4G  1000  7642 77.2 17649 33.0  8207 41.5  5755 90.6 22958 48.3 160.5  3.7
soft RAID0 8 disks
SOF8x4G  1000  8506 86.1 27122 54.2 11086 58.9  6077 95.9 27436 62.9 185.3  4.9
F-BSD P200 RAID
ns2a1    1200  6354 30.5  6062  8.1  4426  8.8 11214 55.0 11319 14.2 182.0 3.0
F-BSD PII 400 RAID
ns2a2    1200  6345 30.5  6068  8.1  4387  8.8 11209 55.1 11328 14.3 170.8 2.8
2*P3 450, DAC960PD, 5 IBM DNES-318350Y 18G SCSI
DAC960pd 1800  3867 53.9  4718  4.3  2825  5.9  6116 80.5  9863  7.6 269.9  3.6
2*AMD 1600, 1024M, 8 Matrox D540X 160G IDE, RAID 5
Raid5     256 16707 98.0 57772 73.2 24978 32.1 17127 96.8  91138 46.2 301.6 2.8
on 2G
Raid5    2000 15892 94.1 55295 73.1 24636 33.0 16256 94.2  83222 60.6 328.6 1.9
RAID 0
Raid0     256 18489 99.7 89231 65.7 42727 28.7 17324 97.2 115269 91.9 313.2  1.2
P3 1G, 512M, 2 A39160, 8 73G ultra160 ST173404LCV SCSI
Raid0     256 13218 99.7 90025 99.9 64460 59.3 12577 97.9 176889 85.7 409.4  4.9
with 18 disks
Raid5      256 11879 97.8 51639 98.7 19286 38.6 12040 96.4 119272 68.2 467.0 8.8
RAID 0
Raid0      256 13192 99.6 92973 99.7 94040 95.4 12625 99.0 178365 89.1 545.1 7.6
P3 1G, 512M, Fasttrack, 4x80G IBM IDE
sirius   1024  7297 60.8 29804 38.9 19738 42.7 12301 91.6 55403 72.0 109.5  1.4


bm (Byte Unix Benchmark)

For comparison see The Linux Benchmarks. Klick on the name for the full bench report.

        Platform tested using BYTE Benchmarks               SUM  AVERAGE   Notes
_____________________________________________________________________________

tpo     Pentium S   200 Mhz  64 M  RAM  PCI  EIDE          66.3   11.1
ruben   AMD K6      200 Mhz  32 M  RAM  PCI  EIDE         118.5   19.7
p-sarga Pentium     233 Mhz 128 M  RAM  PCI  SCSI         236.5   39.4
backup  Pentium     233 Mhz  64 M  RAM  PCI  SCSI         258.1   43.0
fetty   Pentium Pro 200 Mhz 256 M  RAM  PCI  EIDE         316.6   52.8
mail    Pentium II  233 Mhz  64 M  RAM  PCI  SCSI         320.2   53.4
mail128MPentium II  233 Mhz 128 M  RAM  PCI  SCSI         326.0   54.3
p-thusi Pentium II  266 Mhz 128 M  RAM  PCI  EIDE         385.0   64.2
  

Last update: $Date: 2003/02/04 16:02:17 $, Copyright 1996 Tomas Pospisek <tpo_hp at sourcepole.ch>. Distributed under GPL version 2.