Hardware Tests

Run the built in health diagnostic tool.

mc support diag ALIAS --airgap

Replace ALIAS with the alias defined for the server.

Run the three mc support perf tests.

These server-side tests validate network, drive, and object throughput. Run each of the tests with default options.

Alternatively, run all three tests at once with the following command:

mc support perf ALIAS

1. Network test

   Run a network throughput test on a cluster with alias minio1.

   mc support perf net minio1
   

2. Drive test

   Run drive read/write performance measurements on all drive on all nodes for a cluster with alias minio1. The command uses the default blocksize of 4MiB.

   mc support perf drive minio1
   

3. Object test

   Measure the performance of S3 read/write of an object on the alias minio1. AIStor autotunes concurrency to obtain maximum throughput and IOPS (Input/Output Per Second).

   mc support perf object minio1
   

If the mc support diag show unexpected results, you can use the operating system’s default tools.

Test each drive independently on all servers to ensure they are identical in performance. Use the results of these OS-level tools to verify the capabilities of your storage hardware. Record the results for later reference.

1. Test the drive’s performance during write operations

   This tests checks a drive’s ability to write new data (uncached) to the drive by creating a specified number of blocks at up to a certain number of bytes at a time to mimic how a drive would function with writing uncached data. This allows you to see the actual drive performance with consistent file I/O.

   dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/driveN/testfile bs=128k count=80000 oflag=direct conv=fdatasync > dd-write-drive1.txt
   

   Replace driveN with the path for the drive you are testing. The following table breaks down the above command and explains what each flag does.

   Command Element	Description
   dd	The command to copy and paste data.
   if=/dev/zero	Read from /dev/zero, an system-generated endless stream of 0 bytes used to create a file of a specified size
   of=/mnt/driveN/testfile	Write to /mnt/driveN/testfile
   bs=128k	Write up to 128,000 bytes at a time
   count=80000	Write up to 80000 blocks of data
   oflag=direct	Use direct I/O to write to avoid data from caching
   conv=fdatasync	Physically write output file data before finishing
   > dd-write-drive1.txt	Write the contents of the operation’s output to dd-write-drive1.txt in the current working directory

   The operation returns the number of files written, total size written in bytes, the total length of time for the operation (in seconds), and the speed of the writing in some order of bytes per second.

2. Test the drive’s performance during read operations

   dd if=/mnt/driveN/testfile of=/dev/null bs=128k iflag=direct > dd-read-drive1.txt
   

   Replace driveN with the path for the drive you are testing. The following table breaks down the above command and explains what each flag does.

   Command Element	Description
   dd	The command to copy and paste data
   if=/mnt/driveN/testfile	Read from /mnt/driveN/testfile; replace with the path to the file to use for testing the drive’s read performance
   of=/dev/null	Write to /dev/null, a virtual file that does not persist after the operation completes
   bs=128k	Write up to 128,000 bytes at a time
   count=80000	Write up to 80000 blocks of data
   iflag=direct	Use direct I/O to read and avoid data from caching
   > dd-read-drive1.txt	Write the contents of the operation’s output to dd-read-drive1.txt in the current working directory

   Use a sufficiently sized file that mimics the primary use case for your deployment to get accurate read test results.

   The following guidelines may help during performance testing:

   • Small files: < 128KB
   • Normal files: 128KB – 1GB
   • Large files: > 1GB

   You can use the head command to create a file to use. The following command example creates a 10 Gigabyte file called testfile.

   head -c 10G </dev/urandom > testfile
   

   The operation returns the number of files read, total size read in bytes, the total length of time for the operation (in seconds), and the speed of the reading in bytes per second.

Use the Flexible I/O tester (fio) to test the input/output controller and all drives in combination. Document the performance numbers for each server in your deployment.

Save the following to a text file as aistor-io-test.fio

[global]
numjobs=8
iodepth=16
bs=4194304
ioengine=sync
direct=1
rw=read
fsync_on_close=1
group_reporting=0
zero_buffers
[drive0-0]
filesize=1000G
filename=/mnt/disk0/minio/0.bin
[drive0-1]
filesize=1000G
filename=/mnt/disk0/minio/1.bin
[drive0-2]
filesize=1000G
filename=/mnt/disk0/minio/2.bin
[drive0-3]
filesize=1000G
filename=/mnt/disk0/minio/3.bin

Modify the drive#-# sections to match the drives you are testing.

You can modify the other parts of the file if needed:

After modifying the file as needed, run the test with the following command:

fio aistor-io-test.fio