DiskPerf for MPE/iX

What is DiskPerf?

DiskPerf determines performance characteristics of your HP e3000's I/O system and attached disk drives and related storage subsystems. It tells you how fast your disks are, how fast your system can transfer data from them, and just how well those fancy disk arrays are actually performing.

With DiskPerf, you can finally get visibility into the physical I/O capabilities of your system's hardware and capabilities. Your storage vendors tell you that their disk system is fast, but how do you really know? Before DiskPerf, you had to rely on application level performance measurements and overall system performance tools which don't tell you much (if anything) about what your hardware is really doing because they measure performance of the system as a whole, rather than the I/O subsystem specifically.

DiskPerf talks directly to the I/O system in MPE/iX, bypassing the memory manager and virtual memory layers which normally hide the raw disk performance behind caching and virtual storage paging. All of DiskPerf's operations are non-destructive and the program can be run with users on the system.

Some of the measurements that DiskPerf can perform include:

Serial Access
Random Access
Worst-case Access

DiskPerf can test a single drive at a time (allowing you to determine the maximum performance possible with the drive, channel, and CPU), or multiple drives at a time (allowing you to determine maximum system throughput with the drives, channels and CPU(s)).

DiskPerf can help pinpoint problem (slow) disk drives. In the example below, we see that LDEVs 1 and 2 are much slower than modern disk drives, and are good candidates for replacing.

DiskPerf has an interactive help facility (whose help text is also available online) and a redo stack that persists until the end of the job/session.

We also have DiskPerf for the HP-UX Operating System.

Downloads

Free Demo!

Example

:diskperf.pub.allegro

DiskPerf [20001108]                Copyright (c) 2000 Allegro Consultants, Inc.
To terminate, press <break> and do:
   :setjcw jcw 1
   :resume

# disks: 6, # accessible: 4

DiskPerf: dstat

LDEV  Device (sysgen)    # MBs   Hardware Path  Volume Set
----  ----------------  -------  -------------  ----------------
   1  HPC2490AM           2,033  56/52.6.0      MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET
   2  HPC2490AM           2,033  56/52.5.0      MPEXL_SYSTEM_VOLUME_SET
   4  ST15150N            4,095  56/52.1.0      TEST
  13  ST19171N            8,683  56/40.3.0      USERS

LDEVs not online:    3    11

DiskPerf: test all
Test will take about 4.0 minutes...

------------------------------------------------------------------------
LDEV 1...
  cRandom   of LDEV 1; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     53.5 rd/sec
  Same      of LDEV 1; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     98.7 rd/sec
  Serial    of LDEV 1; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     90.3 rd/sec
  Serial100 of LDEV 1; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     93.0 rd/sec
  Steady1MB of LDEV 1; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     96.9 rd/sec
  cWorst    of LDEV 1; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     35.8 rd/sec
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LDEV 2...
  cRandom   of LDEV 2; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     55.8 rd/sec
  Same      of LDEV 2; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     91.5 rd/sec
  Serial    of LDEV 2; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     92.8 rd/sec
  Serial100 of LDEV 2; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     90.4 rd/sec
  Steady1MB of LDEV 2; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    100.0 rd/sec
  cWorst    of LDEV 2; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     36.2 rd/sec
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LDEV 4...
  cRandom   of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     60.7 rd/sec
  Same      of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     85.7 rd/sec
  Serial    of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    387.0 rd/sec
  Serial100 of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    433.2 rd/sec
  Steady1MB of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    108.6 rd/sec
  cWorst    of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     45.9 rd/sec
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LDEV 13...
  cRandom   of LDEV 13; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     81.5 rd/sec
  Same      of LDEV 13; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    119.1 rd/sec
  Serial    of LDEV 13; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    577.5 rd/sec
  Serial100 of LDEV 13; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    534.5 rd/sec
  Steady1MB of LDEV 13; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    100.3 rd/sec
  cWorst    of LDEV 13; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     66.7 rd/sec
------------------------------------------------------------------------

     |      Random        |      Serial        |
LDEV |   Best    Average  |   Best    Average  |  Hardware path
---- | --------  -------- | --------  -------- |  ----------------
   1 |     56.4      53.5 |     92.6      90.3 |  56/52.6.0
   2 |     56.0      55.8 |     93.0      92.8 |  56/52.5.0
   4 |     61.8      60.7 |    436.1     387.0 |  56/52.1.0
  13 |     81.6      81.5 |    579.4     577.5 |  56/40.3.0

...

DiskPerf: test 4
Test will take about 60 seconds...
LDEV 4...
  cRandom   of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     59.6 rd/sec
  Same      of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     85.8 rd/sec
  Serial    of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    431.9 rd/sec
  Serial100 of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    432.5 rd/sec
  Steady1MB of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :    111.9 rd/sec
  cWorst    of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1 :     44.2 rd/sec

     |      Random        |      Serial        |
LDEV |   Best    Average  |   Best    Average  |  Hardware path
---- | --------  -------- | --------  -------- |  ----------------
   1 |      -         -   |      -         -   |  56/52.6.0
   2 |      -         -   |      -         -   |  56/52.5.0
   4 |     62.6      59.6 |    432.3     431.9 |  56/52.1.0
  13 |      -         -   |      -         -   |  56/40.3.0


LDEV 4  (56/52.1.0)

   Test            Best    Average  (reads/sec)
   ------------  --------  --------
   cRandom           62.6      59.6
   Same              85.8      85.8
   Serial           432.3     431.9
   Serial100        432.9     432.5
   Steady1MB        134.9     111.9
   cWorst            45.8      44.2

DiskPerf: set mbs

ok

DiskPerf: serial 4 maxsec 10
Serial of LDEV 4; 1 page(s) per read; start at 1
LDEV    4:    432.9 Serial reads/sec;  1.691 MBs/s [2301; 2,300]
LDEV    4:    437.0 Serial reads/sec;  1.707 MBs/s [4601; 4,600]
(stopped by maxsecs; total reads 4,600)

Total read rate:
LDEV    4:    434.9 Serial reads/sec;  1.699 MBs/s [ ; 4,600]

DiskPerf: //

For details on commands, syntax, a few examples, and other help for DiskPerf, you may wish to view the online help document.

For more information or a free demo of the product,
contact us at info@allegro.com or (408) 252-2330.