We used a tool that uses vdbench and parameter files to run a suite of 17 tests. These tests were a mix of:
- IOPS compared with latency, emulating typical customer workloads:
- OLTP—Random 70 percent reads and 30 percent writes
- RDBMS—Mostly random 40 percent writes, mix of 8 KB and 128 KB; 60 percent reads
- Short duration reads and writes using different block sizes to assess front-end performance under optimal conditions
- Longer steady-state random and sequential writes to assess back-end performance
To prepare for the testing, at the start of each test suite, we used vdbench to fully write to the end of each VMDK with sequential 64 KB writes using random data. The test suite is run with all combinations of the following vSphere options, totaling nine sets of tests:
- RAID options—RAID 1 (FTT=1), RAID 5, RAID 6
- Space efficiency options—None, compression only, deduplication and compression