Category: Performance

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NetApp posts new SPEC SFS NFS results – far faster than V-Max with Celerra VG8

Following the new NetApp block-based SPC-1 results yesterday, here is some NAS benchmark action. This page contains all the SPEC SFS results. SPEC SFS is the NAS equivalent of SPC-1.

SPEC SFS is more cache-friendly than the brutal SPC-1, click here for some more information regarding this industry-standard NAS benchmark. The idea is that thousands of CIFS and NFS servers have been profiled and the benchmark reflects real-life NAS usage patterns.

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New NetApp SPC-1 submission – more IOPS per drive than any other vendor, and a bit on write caching

The SPC-1(E) benchmark is the standard high-intensity test for block storage, consisting of very stringent rules and a standard test suite.

SPC-1 is one of the worst things you can do to a disk array. The benchmark itself does a lot of writes (about 60%), is highly random and is hostile to most caching systems. Which neatly explains why IBM has all kinds of system submissions but doesn’t show XIV, and the complete absence of another prominent vendor (look at the submissions, you’ll figure it out – the big boys of storage are NetApp, IBM, HDS, HP and one more 🙂 ).

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NetApp benefits for virtualization – benchmarked and proven

My colleague Vaughn Stewart explains it in detail here. I didn’t feel we gave this the publicity it deserves.

In a nutshell: We have numbers (published only after VMware engineering themselves approved the paper as accurate and gave their permission) proving that, compared to traditional arrays, running virtualized workloads on NetApp gear needs less resources while providing excellent performance.

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More tales from the field: Sizing best practices – does Compellent follow them?

Another one came in. I’ll keep calling the offenders out until the craziness stops. Fellow engineers – remember that, regardless of where we work, our mission should be to help the customer out first and foremost. Then make a sale, if possible/applicable. I implore you to get your priorities straight. If it looks like you’re losing the fight, figure out what your true value is. If you have no true value, you always have the option of bombing the price. But please, don’t sell someone an under-configured system.

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