How to Measure Storage Throughput and IOPS

This article describes how to check if your storage meets the Hardware Requirements.

CrystalDiskMark

This software is free (MIT license), easy to set up, provides reliable results, and these results are easy to understand.

  • Download http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskMark/index-e.html

  • Select the Standard edition, Portable w/o Ads (zip).

  • Extract it on the target machine and run the appropriate binary for your architecture (DiskMark64.exe or DiskMark32.exe).

  • Change Test size to 2GiB.

    images/download/attachments/160483151/Test_size_2GB.PNG

  • Select the disk drive where YSoft SafeQ will be installed.

    images/download/attachments/160483151/select_disk_drive.PNG

  • Press the All button and wait until the test finishes (the progress is shown in the header of the window).

    images/download/attachments/160483151/results.PNG
  • Save the results to a file: File > Save

    images/download/attachments/160483151/Save.png

  • And check the contents of this resulting file.

How to Interpret the Results

Look to see if the storage is sufficient for ORS Server (a throughput of at least 150 MB/s and 300 IOPS).

An Example of Storage with Sufficient Speed

  • All sequential reads/writes are above 150 MB/s.

  • All random reads/writes are above 300 IOPS.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo

    Crystal Dew World: http://crystalmark.info/

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    * MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]

    * KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

    Sequential Read (Q = 32,T = 1): 229.494 MB/s

    Sequential Write (Q = 32,T = 1): 153.305 MB/s

    Random Read 4KiB (Q = 32,T = 1): 81.998 MB/s [ 20019.0 IOPS]

    Random Write 4KiB (Q = 32,T = 1): 68.278 MB/s [ 16669.4 IOPS]

    Sequential Read (T = 1): 202.590 MB/s

    Sequential Write (T = 1): 152.465 MB/s

    Random Read 4KiB (Q = 1,T = 1): 14.958 MB/s [ 3651.9 IOPS]

    Random Write 4KiB (Q = 1,T = 1): 41.097 MB/s [ 10033.4 IOPS]

    Test: 2048 MiB [C: 5.8% (59.4/1023.7 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]

    Date: 2016/04/08 10:48:18

    OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Standard (full installation) [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)

An Example of Storage with Insufficient Speed

  • Some sequential reads/writes are below 150 MB/s.

  • Some random reads/writes are below 300 IOPS.

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo

    Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

    * MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]

    * KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

    Sequential Read (Q = 32,T = 1): 213.717 MB/s

    Sequential Write (Q = 32,T = 1): 96.769 MB/s

    Random Read 4KiB (Q = 32,T = 1): 1.552 MB/s [ 378.9 IOPS]

    Random Write 4KiB (Q = 32,T = 1): 1.264 MB/s [ 308.6 IOPS]

    Sequential Read (T = 1): 114.935 MB/s

    Sequential Write (T = 1): 49.909 MB/s

    Random Read 4KiB (Q = 1,T = 1): 0.181 MB/s [ 44.2 IOPS]

    Random Write 4KiB (Q = 1,T = 1): 0.388 MB/s [ 94.7 IOPS]

    Test: 2048 MiB [C: 51.9% (10.2/19.7 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]

    Date: 2016/04/08 11:22:12

    OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 Server Standard (full installation) [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)