Intel IOMeter: FileServer & WebServer

After synthetic benchmarks, we feel we need some server stuff :)

Since we cannot predict how big the workload of our server will be, we suggest comparing the HDD + controller combinations according to their average Total I/O values:

The leader among 80GB drives is the SATA solution working with Promise SATA 150 TX2 Plus controller in WT mode. The second prize was won by a SATA drive with SiliconImage controller and the third – by an ATA HDD with Promise Ultra100 TX2 controller. The last one among the four 80GB HDDs appeared a SATA drive with Promise SATA 150 TX2 Plus controller in WB mode. As we have already pointed out to you several times, the WB mode slows down the HDD and controller card in case of random requests.

Among the 120GB HDDs the laurels belong to an ATA drive with 2MB cache buffer. The second fastest is a SATA drive with SiliconImage controller and the last one appeared an ATA drive with 8MB cache-buffer.

It is interesting that as soon as the requests type changes (WebServer pattern has no write requests unlike FileServer pattern), the overall picture changes as well. For example, the SATA drive with SiliconImage controller gives in quite noticeably, while in FileServer pattern this combination performed very stably. But just look how big is the performance improvement of ATA drives here! Even though the first prize was again awarded to the SATA drive with Promise SATA 150 TX2 Plus controller in WT mode, just like in the previous pattern.