Did some benchmarking on the UFies.org box (see the system specs here) to see if the nice 18G Seagate Cheetah drive, with an 8meg cache, compares to 4 Maxtor 40G drives in a RAID5 configuration, each with a pretty decent speed itself? Does SCSI win? Whose drive reigns supreme?
Sorry, slipped into Iron Chef mode for a moment there.
Running hdparm tests on the SCSI drive (/dev/sda) and an individula (non-RAID) IDE drive (/dev/hde) gave me the following results for three separate runs:
Run #1
/dev/sda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.79 seconds =162.03 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 2.10 seconds = 30.48 MB/sec
/dev/hde:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.69 seconds =185.51 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.74 seconds = 36.78 MB/sec
Run #2
/dev/sda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.56 seconds =228.57 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 2.48 seconds = 25.81 MB/sec
/dev/hde:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.55 seconds =232.73 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.60 seconds = 40.00 MB/sec
Run #3
/dev/sda:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.57 seconds =224.56 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 2.28 seconds = 28.07 MB/sec
/dev/hde:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.57 seconds =224.56 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 1.60 seconds = 40.00 MB/sec
After this I ran bonnie on the filesystem to test it. Bonnie not only takes into account the speed of data being moved around the disk, but also of the amount of CPU that it takes to move it. A page with how to interpret the bonnie results is here.
First for the RAID5 setup (/var) the command line was:
bonnie -d /var/tmp -s 1g -n master -r 512MB -u nobody:nogroup -f
And the results:
Version 1.02c ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
master 1G 22414 19 6959 9 11243 5 67.2 0
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 958 90 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 1095 96 +++++ +++ 5052 94
Then I tested the SCSI disk (/) the command line was:
bonnie -d /home/tmp -s 1g -n master -r 512MB -u nobody:nogroup -f
And the results:
Version 1.02c ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
master 1G 19167 20 7908 6 16688 6 298.5 1
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 15163 99 +++++ +++ 12388 99 14929 100 +++++ +++ 7521 67
Basically from what I understand of bonnie, both disks (well, the SCSI vs the RAID) were pretty close, with each edging out the other on various tests.
Just for fun I also ran this test with the same parameters (except for the ram size) on this system, which has RAID0 SCSI, but old SCSI š
Version 1.02c ——Sequential Output—— –Sequential Input- –Random-
-Per Chr- –Block– -Rewrite- -Per Chr- –Block– –Seeks–
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
naked.arcterex.n 1G 9458 45 4492 9 10433 9 89.5 1
——Sequential Create—— ——–Random Create——–
-Create– –Read— -Delete– -Create– –Read— -Delete–
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 296 96 +++++ +++ 19496 99 314 98 +++++ +++ 1199 80