Getting it Right, Part II: An Implementation for Testing Storage Arrays The Way They’ll Be Used

The first storage testing session, “Getting it Right, Testing Storage Arrays the Way They’ll be Used”, discusses a best-practices methodology for testing modern solid state storage arrays. It stresses the importance of emulating real-world workloads and scenarios—including temporal and spatial locality, micro bursts, realistic block size combinations and data content. By emulating these characteristics, testers can do a better job of sizing arrays for potential applications and understanding the performance characteristics of these arrays.

This presentation includes a discussion of an implementation of the methodology. The implementation can use either storage array controller performance measurement processes or wire data to derive application workload models that make it possible to test how an application or application combination affects array performance.

There are typically many components to the workload, with very different access patterns and, sometimes, data content characteristics. Many modern storage arrays are designed for these characteristics, so testing should model them as closely as possible. The presentation will describe this process and other alternatives used today.