BUGS...Catch them before they catch you! A Survey of Storage Test Tools and Industry Best Practices

Test tool vendors are in the unique position of understanding how vendors test their products. Traditional Network Storage testing relies on benchmarks and home-grown tools. Storage developers often rely on home-grown tools for performance testing, home-grown tools and standard clients for validation testing and benchmarks for comparison with other products. Recently, commercial-grade tools have appeared on the market, with vendors claiming to address performance and scalability testing. In this presentation we will share what we have learned (without names!), including how freeware, benchmarking tools, homegrown tools and commercial tools are used today. We will also present emerging best practices Each test tool type offers value, but no single tool has yet emerged that meets all storage testing requirements. This is because multiple approaches are required to characterize device- and system-level performance. Benchmarks are useful for testing certain performance characteristics of NAS systems, but do not accurately mimic real user behavior. Homegrown tools can be expensive, painful to maintain and are inflexible

You will understand how freeware, benchmarking tools, homegrown Storage Testing tools and commercial Storage Testing tools are used today
You will learn about the leading Storage Networking commercial tools currently available
You will learn about Storage Testing best practices as learned from our customer base