Issue TOC Print full article Print this page Download as PDF E-Mail this URL Discuss this article Flame the author     In this article Introduction Chips Matter Hewlett-Packard ProLiant ML330 Hewlett-Packard tc2120 Dell PowerEdge 600SC Gateway 920 IBM eServer xSeries 205 Lantech Database 2700 L Executive Summary How We Tested Weblinks Report Card

To test sub-$1K servers, we used Microsoft Windows 2000 SP3, a Cisco Catalyst 3550 12-port copper Gigabit Ethernet switch, an Avocent 2161 KVM, IOMeter Version 5.10.2003 and Spirent Web Avalanche.

We set up IOMETER with the following access patterns:

• Database test: 2-KB random I/Os with a mix of 67 percent reads and 33 percent writes, which represents a typical database workload.

• Maximum read throughput test: Transfer request size to 64 KB, the percent read/write distribution to 100 percent read and the percent random/sequential distribution to 100 percent sequential.

• Maximum write throughput test: Transfer request size to 64 KB, the percent read/write distribution to 100 percent write and the percent random/sequential distribution to 100 percent sequential.

• Maximum I/O rate test: Transfer request size to 512 bytes, the percent read/write distribution to 100 percent read, and the percent random/sequential distribution to 100 percent sequential.

• NWC generalized custom test: Transfer request sizes of 512 bytes with 33 percent access distribution, 2 KB with 34 percent access distribution and 64 KB with 33 percent access distribution. On the 512-byte segment, the percent read/write distribution set to 100 percent read, and the percent random/sequential distribution set to 100 percent sequential. On the 2-KB segment, the percent read/write distribution set to 67 percent read 33 percent write, and the percent random/sequential to 100 percent random. On the 64-KB segment, the percent read/write distribution set to 100 percent read, and the percent random/sequential distribution to 100 percent read.

Spirent Web Avalanche

The Web Avalanche was set up with 100 Caw users per second, with a maximum of 2,000 users. Files were 7 KB to 10 KB.