Recent SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specifications (PTS) have enumerated standard practices for the capture, analysis and test using Real World Workloads.

The SNIA Compute, Storage & Memory Initiative (CMSI), the Solid State Storage Technical Working Group (S3 TWG), and the Green Storage Technical Work Group (GS TWG) periodically publish Reference Real World Workloads deemed to represent common application use cases.

The following figures present each of the Reference Real World Workloads.

Figure 1

Real World Workloads Library Listing shows several Reference Real World Workloads.

Figure 2

Reference Real World Workload Table provides select tabular information for each workload.

Figure 3

Individual IO Stream Maps show IO Streams, IOs, IOPS and Queue Depths for each Reference Workload.

More detailed analytics, free IO Capture tools and interactive IO Stream workload playback is available at www.testmyworkload.com.

Figure -Real World Workloads: Listing

Figure 2 - Reference Real World Workloads: Table Comparison

24-Hour Retail Web Portal: 2 Drive, Windows, 290 x 5 min steps

24-Hour Retail Web Portal: 2 Drive, Windows, 290 x 5 min steps

The Retail Web Portal (Figure 3a) is a 2-drive, 24-hour workload consisting of various retail events, such as morning boot storm, opening, daily and closing activities, and a 2 AM backup. It features different IO Streams, Queue Depths (QD) ranging from 5 to 306, block sizes from 0.5K to 64K, and a normalized read/write (RW) mix with 65% read IOs (R IOs)

Figure 3b – 24-Hour GPS Nav Portal: File System Boot DriveC, Windows, 290 x 5 min steps

Real World GPS Nav Portal – 24 Hr SQL Workload: Drive C

The GPS Navigation Portal has two single-drive, 24-hour reference workloads: DriveC boot drive (Figure 3b) and Drive0 storage drive (Figure 3c). DriveC file system capture is dominated by SEQ 128B Reads, is 67% read (R), and has a Queue Depth (QD) range of 6 to 368.

Figure 3c – 24-Hour GPS Nav Portal: Block Storage Drive0, Windows, 290 x 5 min steps

Real World GPS Nav Portal – 24 Hr SQL Workload: Drive 0

Drive0 block-level capture (Figure 3c) has smaller block sizes, is 100% write (W), has a Queue Depth (QD) range from 6 to 368, and experiences periodic SEQ 0.5K W IO spikes.

Figure 3d - 12-Hour VDI Storage Cluster: Windows, 158 x 5 min steps

VDI 6 Drive Storage Cluster - 12-hour IO Capture

The VDI Storage 6-Drive Cluster (Figure 3d) is a six-drive RAID 0 LUN, 12-hour workload comprised of non-fragmented storage block sizes, higher QDs (up to 1,024) and a RW mix of 75% W IOs. Note that 6-drive IO Streams are aggregated as a feature of CTS IOProfiler software.