Comments on: Putting your storage to the test – Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega IX4-200D http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/ Your P.I. on virtualization Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:19:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: Gabes Virtual WorldPerformance test of Iomega StorCenter PX4-300R - Gabes Virtual World http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-1679 Gabes Virtual WorldPerformance test of Iomega StorCenter PX4-300R - Gabes Virtual World Tue, 27 Sep 2011 09:02:05 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-1679 [...] 2010 I put an Iomega StorCenter IX4 to the test and published the results in these two blogposts: Putting your storage to the test – Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega StorCenter IX4-200D and part 2. Recently Iomega sent me their new StorCenter PX4-300R for testing purpose and I was [...] [...] 2010 I put an Iomega StorCenter IX4 to the test and published the results in these two blogposts: Putting your storage to the test – Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega StorCenter IX4-200D and part 2. Recently Iomega sent me their new StorCenter PX4-300R for testing purpose and I was [...]

]]> By: Gabes Virtual WorldHomelab for VCP and VCDX http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-1677 Gabes Virtual WorldHomelab for VCP and VCDX Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:08:40 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-1677 [...] -          Iomega IX4-200D (4 disks, NFS, iSCSI) (!!! On VMware HCL !!!) http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/storcenter-network-storage-solution/network-hard-drive-ix4-200d/#tech_specsItem_tab. To see how this IX4 performs, take a look at my previous post: Putting your storage to the test – Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega IX4-200D [...] [...] -          Iomega IX4-200D (4 disks, NFS, iSCSI) (!!! On VMware HCL !!!) http://go.iomega.com/en/products/network-storage-desktop/storcenter-network-storage-solution/network-hard-drive-ix4-200d/#tech_specsItem_tab. To see how this IX4 performs, take a look at my previous post: Putting your storage to the test – Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega IX4-200D [...]

]]> By: Ewan's Blog on IT and stuff like it » Blog Archive » Thoughts on Iomega IX4-200d performance tests http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-1400 Ewan's Blog on IT and stuff like it » Blog Archive » Thoughts on Iomega IX4-200d performance tests Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:45:56 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-1400 [...] been an excellent blog post overnight on the performance of the Iomega IX4-200d disk array, one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) VMware certified iSCSI capable disk arrays [...] [...] been an excellent blog post overnight on the performance of the Iomega IX4-200d disk array, one of the cheapest (if not the cheapest) VMware certified iSCSI capable disk arrays [...]

]]> By: Julianna Nelson http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-826 Julianna Nelson Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:15:17 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-826 I for one appreciate the insight. Thanks for taking the time to write about and share your process. I for one appreciate the insight. Thanks for taking the time to write about and share your process.

]]> By: Welcome to vSphere-land! » Storage Links http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-604 Welcome to vSphere-land! » Storage Links Thu, 07 Jan 2010 17:05:57 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-604 [...] in vSphere (VMware Storage Blog) Storage Changes in the VMware vSphere 4 Family (Stephen Foskett) Putting your storage to the test - Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega IX4-200D (Gabe’s Virtual World) SAN Management Tips for VMware vSphere 4.0 (Emulex) Top Ten for VMware [...] [...] in vSphere (VMware Storage Blog) Storage Changes in the VMware vSphere 4 Family (Stephen Foskett) Putting your storage to the test – Part 1 iSCSI on Iomega IX4-200D (Gabe’s Virtual World) SAN Management Tips for VMware vSphere 4.0 (Emulex) Top Ten for VMware [...]

]]> By: WHE http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-815 WHE Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:14:54 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-815 Thanks a lot for the data. The results are more or less in line with what I have seen in my test environment. A few comments/questions:<br><br>1. The ATTO profile led to 37.686 MB/s at 32K read, while test 001a produced 50.06 MB/s. That is a pretty big difference considering both are 100% sequential read. Any idea what the ATTO profile is doing differently?<br>2. The sequential write performance numbers seem to be really low (at least from the ATTO), did you happen to run a Iometer test with 100% sequential and 100% write at 32K? Would be interesting to see what write performance is like.<br>3. Since you followed the "open unofficial storage performance thread", I assume you used the "Test Connection Rate" parameter in your tests? I found the parameter making a big difference because disk close operations have impact on cache flushing and prefetching.<br>4. The disk write cache setting on 200d didn't make much difference in my testing, the numbers were within 5% variation.<br>5. Does anyone know the value of parameter MaxXmitDataSegmentLength in VMware iSCSI initiator? The Iomega target has 8K for parameter MaxRecvDataSegmentLength, that's a pretty small receive buffer. I wonder if ESX has to negotiate down during session creation.<br>6. The 200d has a Marvell 1.2GHz processor, which might be the bottleneck in a random I/O workload. I also tested the Iomega ix4-200r, a rackmount product that runs a Celeron 3.0GHz CPU and also 4 SATA disks, random performance is about 3x there. Do you think CPU is very important in random I/Os?<br><br>Please share your NFS data when you have it. I suspect performance should be about the same as iSCSI, but really would like to see data. Thanks a lot for the data. The results are more or less in line with what I have seen in my test environment. A few comments/questions:

1. The ATTO profile led to 37.686 MB/s at 32K read, while test 001a produced 50.06 MB/s. That is a pretty big difference considering both are 100% sequential read. Any idea what the ATTO profile is doing differently?
2. The sequential write performance numbers seem to be really low (at least from the ATTO), did you happen to run a Iometer test with 100% sequential and 100% write at 32K? Would be interesting to see what write performance is like.
3. Since you followed the “open unofficial storage performance thread”, I assume you used the “Test Connection Rate” parameter in your tests? I found the parameter making a big difference because disk close operations have impact on cache flushing and prefetching.
4. The disk write cache setting on 200d didn't make much difference in my testing, the numbers were within 5% variation.
5. Does anyone know the value of parameter MaxXmitDataSegmentLength in VMware iSCSI initiator? The Iomega target has 8K for parameter MaxRecvDataSegmentLength, that's a pretty small receive buffer. I wonder if ESX has to negotiate down during session creation.
6. The 200d has a Marvell 1.2GHz processor, which might be the bottleneck in a random I/O workload. I also tested the Iomega ix4-200r, a rackmount product that runs a Celeron 3.0GHz CPU and also 4 SATA disks, random performance is about 3x there. Do you think CPU is very important in random I/Os?

Please share your NFS data when you have it. I suspect performance should be about the same as iSCSI, but really would like to see data.

]]> By: PiroNet http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-813 PiroNet Tue, 05 Jan 2010 02:59:11 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-813 Excellent post Gabe. We see more and more entry level NAS'es in HCL for vSphere, Iomega being the first one I guess.<br><br>I have also compiled and published a post on my blog regarding benchmarking tools available out there and especially IOmeter. I've created a baseline IOmeer.cfg config file based on a post from Chad.<br><br>As well I've tested my NAS device, a QNAP TS-639 and published some posts about it. Just have a read.<br><br>More at <a href="http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/benchmark-tools-what-i-use/" rel="nofollow">http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/ben...</a><br><br>BTW I found a new tool called Intel NAS Performance Toolkit. Give it a try...<br><br>Rgds<br>Didier<br>Happy New Year 2010 Excellent post Gabe. We see more and more entry level NAS'es in HCL for vSphere, Iomega being the first one I guess.

I have also compiled and published a post on my blog regarding benchmarking tools available out there and especially IOmeter. I've created a baseline IOmeer.cfg config file based on a post from Chad.

As well I've tested my NAS device, a QNAP TS-639 and published some posts about it. Just have a read.

More at http://deinoscloud.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/ben…

BTW I found a new tool called Intel NAS Performance Toolkit. Give it a try…

Rgds
Didier
Happy New Year 2010

]]> By: Gabriele http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-814 Gabriele Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:36:29 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-814 Hi Gabe, great post!<br><br>Why did you choose to NOT aligning the file system partition?<br><br>I ran ATTO test on a similar system (thecus Raid5 with 4 disks, virtual machine win2008 with aligned file system) obtaining about 35MB/s write and 75MB/s read with 64KB block size.<br><br>It could be interesting to see the same tests with aligned file system to see the difference.. Hi Gabe, great post!

Why did you choose to NOT aligning the file system partition?

I ran ATTO test on a similar system (thecus Raid5 with 4 disks, virtual machine win2008 with aligned file system) obtaining about 35MB/s write and 75MB/s read with 64KB block size.

It could be interesting to see the same tests with aligned file system to see the difference..

]]> By: ronsdavis http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-816 ronsdavis Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:58:43 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-816 I was just talking to a coworker about why Sun's 1U servers can be shipped with 6 sas drives, but only 4 SSDs. I told him the SSDs probably overwhelm the RAID controller. Perhaps there is some truth. This is an unfortunate result though, in that I really wanted to build one of these things up with SSDs. Somebody needs to try a Drobo now. I was just talking to a coworker about why Sun's 1U servers can be shipped with 6 sas drives, but only 4 SSDs. I told him the SSDs probably overwhelm the RAID controller. Perhaps there is some truth. This is an unfortunate result though, in that I really wanted to build one of these things up with SSDs. Somebody needs to try a Drobo now.

]]> By: Randy J. Cress http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/putting-your-storage-to-the-test-part-1-iscsi-on-iomega-ix4-200d/#comment-578 Randy J. Cress Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:18:42 +0000 http://www.gabesvirtualworld.com/?p=909#comment-578 SSD Results at: <a href="http://bit.ly/8pUoZL" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/8pUoZL</a><br><br>I wish I had a better random IO test results, but I'm tired of messing with it for now! SSD Results at: http://bit.ly/8pUoZL

I wish I had a better random IO test results, but I'm tired of messing with it for now!

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