Benchmarking Workload Storage Performance – An Expert Q&A

Nearly 1,000 people have watched our most recent SNIA ESF webcast, Storage Performance Benchmarking: Workloads. We hope you didn’t miss this 5th and final installment of the now famous Storage Performance Benchmarking webcast series where our experts, Mark Rogov and Chris Coniff, explained how to measure and optimize storage performance of workloads. If you haven’t seen it, it’s available on-demand. The live audience had many great questions. Here are answers to them all. Read More

Storage Performance Benchmarking – The Sequel

We at the Ethernet Storage Forum heard you loud and clear. You need more info on storage performance benchmarking. Our first Webcast, “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Introduction and Fundamentals” was tremendously popular – reaching over 2x the average audience, while hundreds more have read our Q&A blog on the same topic. So, back by popular demand Mark Rogov, Advisory Systems Engineer at EMC, Ken Cantrell, Performance Engineering Manager at NetApp, and I will move past the basics to the second Webcast in this series Storage Performance Benchmarking Part 2. With a focus on System Under Test (SUT), we’ll cover:

  • Commonalities and differences between basic Block and File terminology
  • Basic file components and the meaning of data workloads
  • Main characteristics of various workloads and their respective dependencies, assumptions and environmental components
  • The complexity of the technology benchmark interpretations
  • The importance to System Under Test:
    • What are the elements of a SUT?
    • Why are caches so important to understanding performance of a SUT?
    • Bottlenecks and threads and why they matter

I hope you’ll join us on October 21st at 9:00 a.m. PT. to learn why file performance benchmarking truly is an art. My colleagues and I plan to deliver another informative and interactive hour. Please register today and bring your questions. I hope to see you there.

New Webcast: Storage Performance Benchmarking 101

There’s an art to making sense of storage performance benchmarks. That’s why ESF is hosting a live Webcast on this important topic. Please join us on July 30th for “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Introduction and Fundamentals.”   At this Webcast, you’ll gain an understanding of the complexities of benchmarking modern storage arrays and learn the terminology foundations necessary for the rest of the series as Mark Rogov, Advisory Systems Engineer at EMC, Ken Cantrell, Performance Engineering Manager at NetApp, and I discuss:

  • The different kinds of performance benchmarking engagements
  • An introduction to the variety of relevant metrics
  • How to determine the “right” metrics for your business
  • Terminology basics: IOPS, op/s, throughput, bandwidth, latency/response time

If you’re untrained in the storage performance arts, this Webcast will bring you up-to-speed on the basics. My colleagues and I hope it will be an informative and interactive hour. Please register today and bring your questions. I hope to see you there.