Performance in FC-Test

Now we’re going to check the controller in a single-user environment that operates with files rather than sectors.

We stick to our traditional methodology of using FC-Test: we create two logical volumes, 32GB each, on the array and format them in NTFS and then in FAT32. We create a set of files on the first volume, and then this pattern is read from the array, then copied into a folder on the same partition (Copy Near, within one and the same logical volume), and finally copied onto another partition (Copy Far).

The test system is rebooted before each test to avoid the influence of the OS’s caching on the results. We use five file patterns here:

• Install (414 files, 575MB in total)
• ISO (three files, 1.6GB in total)
• MP3 (271 files, 1GB in total)
• Programs (8504 files, 1.4GB in total)
• Windows (9006 files, 1.06GB in total)

Let’s start with NTFS. We’re going to examine the results of each test action for each pattern independently due to the abundance of data. The first action is the creation of a set of files on the array.

We built diagrams for the three most curious cases:

The RAID0 arrays are quite expectedly the fastest. The RAID5 ones are rather fast at processing the Install and ISO patterns, but slow down on the Programs files which are too small. And still, the performance of the RAID0 and RAID5 arrays scales up depending on the number of the disks in the array as can be seen for each test pattern.

Writing to a RAID1 array takes more time than writing to the single drive, and the RAID10 doesn’t have a very high write speed, either.

Next goes the reading test:

And the results are rather strange. The speeds of the 3- and 4-disk RAID0 and RAID5 arrays are very similar and, in fact, disappointing. Can the Adaptive Read Ahead setting be spoiling the day once again?

The best performance is delivered by the 2-disk RAID0 and the RAID10 (which can be viewed as a 2-disk RAID0 at sequential reading). The read speed of the RAID1 is the same as the speed of the single drive.