Suresh,

Performance benchmarking is a science that involves many variables.  I am not familiar with CrystalDiskMark but I just downloaded the source for 3.0 RC2 and will have a look to see how applicable it could be to a filer vs local disk comparison.  Can you add some more details about your configuration?  (any options you run with the test, specs/model of the server including controller/RAID card(s), OS on the server, disk model in the server, disks in the filer, model of the filer, ONTAP rev, etc).  A lot of detail is going to be required to make any headway or recommendations for a valid test.

Thank you,

Tim

From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Suresh Rajagopalan
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 8:55 PM
To: Toasters List
Subject: I/O benchmarking

I’m using the free tool Crystaldiskmark to do some  I/O comparison between local disk and our filers. On at least one system  (SAN connected), the local disk (6 disks in RAID1) consistently comes out ahead in both read and write. Filer is lightly loaded, and this is on a 56 disk aggregate.   I’m kind of stumped on this one, and would like to know if:

a) Are there any other commonly used benchmarks which I can try with the filers? 

b) This is on a 2G FC SAN.  How much improvement can I expect with 4G or 8G?

Thanks

Suresh