Performance in Intel IOMeter DataBase Pattern

The Database test opens up the show. This pattern serves to reveal the ability of the drives to process a mixed stream of requests for reading and writing random-address 8KB data blocks. By changing the ratio of write and read requests we can estimate how well the drive is sorting the requests out.

For a more illustrative analysis, we draw diagrams for different workloads. The drives are grouped according to the manufacturer:

All drives showed similar speeds at 100% reading, but as soon as there appear write requests the IC35L090AVV207 model becomes the leader until 50% writes. After this mark, Hitachi HDS7225080VLSA80 proves that a large cache buffer and efficient lazy write algorithms may be more important for the performance than a smaller average access time (the IC35L090AVV207-0 has two platters and three read/write heads; considering the 60GB capacity of its platters, we can talk about it having small access time as the operational zone of its patters is narrower).

It’s interesting that Hitachi HDS722580VLAT20, which looks like the closest relative to HDS7225080VLSA80 model, behaves quite differently under this workload. It dawns upon this drive that it can save write requests in the buffer till the right moment only after the writes share equals 100%! Of course, we realize that the number of cache segments differs greatly between senior and junior models from IBM-Hitachi, just because the junior models have a smaller cache, 2MB.

Let’s increase the workload a little:

Under the workload of 16 requests, the SATA drive has hard time getting through the mixed read/write modes, losing even to the IBM DTLA307075. However, HDS722580VLSA80 restores its reputation in modes with more writes. Hitachi HDS722580VLAT20 was also slower than the DTLA307075 when there are more writes in the queue, but outperformed it subsequently. IC35L090AVV207-0 was the best, just a little behind HDS722580VLSA80 in two modes only.

Now, the workload is the highest:

The drives remained on their respective positions, only the gaps between the speed graphs have become wider. IBM IC35L090AVV207 draws a curious graph – this drive must have given us the utmost its mechanics allowed.