Q. How can I easily stress test my storage subsystem?

Stress test your storage subsystem using a useful free tool.

John Savill

September 23, 2015

1 Min Read
Q. How can I easily stress test my storage subsystem?

Q. How can I easily stress test my storage subsystem?

A. Diskspd is a free tool for performing a variety of testing on your storage subsystem with combinations of testing parameters. Download it here. Once downloaded, there are a number of key parameters. Below is an example usage of the tool:

C:toolsdiskspd.exe -c5G -d60 -r -w90 -t8 -o8 -b8K -h -L C:ClusterStorageVolume1testfile.dat

In this example I am testing a cluster shared volume and the tool creates a file to perform the testing, in this case testfile.dat (-L). The other parameters I use are as follows:

Parameter

Description

-c5G

-c is the size of the file used. In this case 5 GB which should be as large as possible since a small file will skew the results (because of short stroking)

-d60

-d is the duration of the test, in this case 60 seconds which should be considered the minimum for most tests

-r

-r specifies random IOs, alternatively use -s for sequential

-w90

-w configures the percentage of the IOs that are writes, in this case 90% which would mean 10% reads

-t8

-t is the number of threads per file, in this case 8. For small IOs you should have a large number of threads, ideally equal to the number of cores on the system

-o8

Number of outstanding IOs

-b8k

Size of the IO. 8KB in this case

-h

Disable hardware and software caching

Jose Barreto has a great blog post on this tool, which I recommend reading.

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