Testing DSS Version 6.0up30.8101.4362 64bit iSCSI Performance

[oxleyn]

Hi,

I've read a lot of posts regarding testing out the performance of DSS and iSCSI using IOMeter and would be grateful if somebody could please share the IOMeter settings used when carrying out such tests. i.e. Access Specifications, 4KB, 32KB, 50% Read etc. etc.

I believe my DSS SANs are under performing and I would like to try and determine if this is the case or not.

Many thanks,

Nik

[r3vo]

hey oxleyn,

try this link, there were made some unofficial performance tests with different systems and IOmeter including the settings.
The performancetests doesn't belong to the DSS software but a few posts later you can download the .icf (IOMeter) file on the first page.
Load it with IOmeter and all the settings are done! You just have to pick the specific access specification and run the test. After all you can compare youre results with others.

hope, that helped.

LINK:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread...0&tstart=0

[oxleyn]

Thanks a lot for the URL r3vo.

I am getting around 95MB/s using the 100% read test which seems low to me considering I have 4 NICs in a bond. Am running the test from within a VM and the ESX host also has 4 NICs too configured with 4 separate VMkernels and a round robin storage access policy. I have also made the tweaks to both DSS iSCSI target and the ESX host.

How does this performance sound to you guys?

Thanks again,

Nik

[oxleyn]

An update: I have delete the bond of 4 NICs on my DSS and just have the 1 NIC dedicated to iSCSI traffic (plus 1 for management). These NICs are on completely seperate switches and subnets too.

Now when I run the 100% read test I'm getting more like 108MB/s throughput!

Thanks,

Nik

[gjtje]

I think it's better to use MPIO for iscsi than bonding, it's supported nicely by the DSS and you don't need any special settings for nic's and switches.

Also don't forget that with bonding a tcp/ip session is limited to 1 nic, your test probbaly only used one session so then you can have 25 nic's in a bond, it will still only use one.

[oxleyn]

Thanks for the reply gjtje.

I have configured MPIO on the ESX side but how do I go about getting the best use out of the multiple NICs I have in my DSS boxes?