Performance in Intel IOMeter File Server & Web Server Patterns

These patterns simulate the operation of the disk subsystem of a typical file- or web-server. First goes the File Server pattern with caching enabled:

The File Server pattern has only 20% of write requests and all arrays find this mode favorable. The RAID1 is faster than the two-disk RAID0, while the RAID10 is close to the four-disk RAID0 in performance. It means that TwinStor is working excellently at this reads/writes ratio.

The RAID0 arrays show nice scalability in speed: the more drives are included into the array, the faster the array is.

Let’s calculate the performance rating for each array by averaging the controller speed under each workload:

The results are predictable, although I’d single out the high number of the RAID10. Let’s now compare four-disk arrays in WriteBack and WriteThrough modes:

Even 20% of writes is enough for the speed to suffer from turning lazy write off. The ratings follow:

Depending on the array type, the performance in the WriteThrough mode goes down by 10-30%. Well, that’s not a very big pay for security…