EVA4400 testing

Right before I left Friday I started a test on the EVA4400 with a 100GB file. This is the same file-size I configured DataProtector to use for the backup-to-disk files, so it's a good test size.

Sequential Write speed: 79,065 KB/s
Sequential Read speed: 52,107 KB/s

That's a VERY good number. The Write speed above is about the same speed as I got on the MSA1500 when running against a Raid0 volume, and this is a Raid5 volume on the 4400. The 10GB file-size test I did before this one I also watched the EVA performance on the monitoring server, and controller CPU during that time was 15-20% max. Also, it really used both controllers (thanks to MPIO).

Random Write speed: 46,427 KB/s
Random Read speed: 3,721 KB/s

Now we see why HP strongly recommends against using FATA drives for random I/O. For a file server that's 80% read I/O, it would be a very poor choice. This particular random-read test is worst-case, since a 100GB file can't be cached in RAM so this represents pure array performance. File-level caching on the server itself would greatly improve performance. The same test with a 512MB file turns in a random read number of 1,633,538 KB/s which represents serving the whole test in cache-RAM on the testing station itself.

This does suggest a few other tests:
  • As above, but two 100MB files at the same time on the same LUN
  • As above, but two 100MB files at the same time on different LUNs in the same Disk Group
  • As above, but two 100MB files at the same time on different LUNs in different Disk Groups