Administration

Use Warp to evaluate hardware, plan capacity, and verify that your storage infrastructure meets your requirements.

What administrators can do with Warp

Evaluate storage performance

Type of evaluation What to test How to interpret
Test infrastructure capabilities before deployment Measure throughput, latency, and consistency using different workload patterns Verify hardware meets requirements
Determine load range Use mixed workload tests with gradually increasing concurrency Identify system limits before performance degrades
Test new hardware Performance comparison can identify performance regressions or improvements Check that new software or hardware changes meet requirements before deployment
Verify SLA compliance Stability tests reveal performance consistency over extended periods Check that applications have adequate response times
Isolate performance issues Run focused tests on upload, download, or metadata operations to identify problem areas Adjusting concurrency and object sizes can help you understand your system under various conditions

Get started

Quick performance check

Run a basic mixed workload test to get initial performance measurements.

The following command tests combined upload, download, and metadata performance for 10 minutes.

# Test upload performance
warp put --host s3.example.com --access-key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --secret-key YOUR_SECRET_KEY

# Test download performance
warp get --host s3.example.com --access-key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --secret-key YOUR_SECRET_KEY

Comprehensive evaluation

For thorough evaluation, run multiple test types to understand different aspects of performance. Review test output to understand throughput and latency for each operation type.

For exact metric definitions, units, and notation used in command examples, see the Reference page sections on throughput, latency, and duration notation.

The following commands separately test PUT, GET, and MIXED workloads.

# Test upload performance
warp put --host s3.example.com --access-key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --secret-key YOUR_SECRET_KEY

# Test download performance
warp get --host s3.example.com --access-key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --secret-key YOUR_SECRET_KEY

# Test performance under a blend of activities
# mixed tests are best run after having a base understanding of your system's performance
warp mixed --host s3.example.com --access-key YOUR_ACCESS_KEY --secret-key YOUR_SECRET_KEY

Best practices

  • Pre-qualify the hardware

    Use tools like mc support perf to check that the hardware you are using is capable of the type of performance you want to see.

  • Start simple, then scale

    Run a mixed workload test for 10-15 minutes to get initial results. Gradually increase test complexity and duration as you understand system behavior.

  • Match tests to your workload

    Configure tests to reflect your actual application patterns. Review test configuration options to match your environment.

  • Run tests multiple times

    Performance can vary between test runs due to cache effects, network conditions, and system load. Run each test at least three times and compare results.

  • Understand the results

    Review understanding results to interpret throughput, latency, and percentile metrics. Focus on metrics that matter for your specific use case rather than trying to optimize everything.

  • Document your testing

    Keep test data files for performance comparison over time. The warp analyze command retrieves results from a test. Use warp cmp to compare results between two tests of the same type.

Learn more

Topic Description
Core concepts Understand test types, configuration, and results
Test types Learn about available tests and when to use each
Common tests Start with frequently-used tests
Specialized tests Explore advanced testing scenarios