Intel IOMeter: FileServer and WebServer

So, it’s high time we tested WD Raptor in server patterns.

When we compared the performance of Raptor drive with that of SCSI drives and RAID arrays built of 7,200rpm drives, we discovered that it was faster than RAID arrays under linear workload (queue=1), and is equally fast with them under higher workloads. But as for SCSI drives, our Raptor can compete with them only under linear workload.

If we transform the results obtained into our rating (we consider all workloads as equally probable and average the Total I/O values), we will get the following picture:

According to this rating, the WD Raptor drive got a bit more points than RAID arrays (due to an unbelievably large gap between them under linear workload), but yields quite a bit to SCSI solutions.

Now we are going to take a look at WebServer patter, which is especially interesting because WD Raptor will lose its major trump here: efficient lazy write algorithms (WebServer doesn’t include and writes at all).

At first sight the performance of WD360GD changed only under linear workload. But if we compare its result with the performance shown by other testing participants, the picture will strike us a something really curious:

Look, how fast RAID 1 array has become here! It’s true that reads interleaving onto both drives of the mirrored pair can improve the performance rather significantly. Only under linear workload WD360GD leaves both RAID arrays far behind and competes with Seagate Cheetah 36ES SCSI drive, which boasts almost the same access time.

Now please check our rating:

Well, when WD360GD works only with read requests, it yields one step to RAID 1 array of two HDDs.

Well, the tests in server patterns revealed a very interesting thing: WD360GD hard disk drive is a worthy competitor to SCSI solutions only under linear workload. Keeping in mind that the disk subsystem of a small server is not too loaded, then why not take a Raptor drive? Besides, each HDD forming the array is usually loaded less than the entire array in general.