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:\tools\diskspd.exe -c5G -d60 -r -w90 -t8 -o8 -b8K -h -L C:\ClusterStorage\Volume1\testfile.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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