Intel IOMeter: DataBase

Now that we have already tested the Sequential Read and Write speeds of the new drive, let’s check its performance in the DataBase pattern.

The tables contain Total I/O values (the amount of requests processed per second) for different shares of reads and writes. Let’s start with the linear workload (queue=1):

At first, let’s compare the performance of WD360GD and other testing participants.

Not bad at all, don’t you think so? Excellent lazy write algorithms allow WD360GD drive to outperform one of the fastest 10K SCSI drives in mode tests! Not to mention Seagate Cheetah 36ES, which was completely defeated in absolutely all test modes. RAID 0 array of two IDE drives with 7,200rpm spindle rotation speed also appeared out of the actual competition. So, large cache-buffer, advanced lazy write algorithms and fast mechanics oust SCSI drives from the leading positions.

Now let’s see how the controller used can affect the performance of WD360GD:

As you see, Promise controller proves more efficient than SiliconImage when the writes share is bigger. It is especially noticeable in the results obtained for Promise (WB) controller.

Now let’s pass over to higher workloads:

This is shocking result! Look, how greatly SCSI drives improved here! Being able to change the requests processing order (command tag queuing), SCSI HDDs manage to get ahead of other testing participants, as soon as the queue depth grows over 1. WD360GD drive also got faster, but its success is nothing compared to the improvement of the SCSI drives. Well, it looks as if SCSI drives will remain most efficient under heavy workloads, unless the requests sorting is done by the hard disk drive and not by the ATA/SATA controller (in other words, unless the ATA/SATA HDDs learn to support command tag queuing). Although we have to admit that fast mechanics of WD Raptor helped it to beat both RAID arrays, and the gap between WD360GD and WD400JB looks more like the Grand Canyon. :)

To be fair, we should point out excellent implementation of lazy write algorithms by WD360GD: it managed to outpace Seagate Cheetah 36ES in case of high writes share.

Now let’s compare the performance of different SATA controllers:

It is evident that Promise controller ensures better performance of the raptor drive, and in RandomWrite mode WD360GD with Promise (WB) controller still managed to defeat Fujitsu MAN. And this is one more proof that proper controller matters a lot for efficient WD360GD performance.

Now the queue depth has been increased up to 256.

With this requests queue we get the maximum hard disk drive performance, which can hardly be ever obtained in real life. However, in this case you can clearly see the optimization of HDD firmware, or of the RAID controller driver, a sin our case:

Both SCSI drives are still ahead, but Seagate Cheetah 36ES outpaces Fujitsu MAN when the writes share is quite big. Both RAID arrays look pretty OK here, especially in case of low writes share. WD360GD drive lays itself out trying to beat RAID arrays and SCSI solutions. And although it manages to outperform RAID arrays when the writes share reaches 50%, the SCSI drives yield to it only in RandomWrite mode.

Now come the controllers:

As you see, all controllers performed almost equally fast, except Promise (WB). The latter needs extra time for requests processing, which slows it down noticeably with such a long requests queue.