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From: David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org>
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Testing Sandforce SSD
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 01:37:01 -0600
Message-ID: <4C4A981D.2000605@boreham.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4C4A9452.9070100@gmail.com>
References: <4C4A9452.9070100@gmail.com>


> Do you guys have any more ideas to properly 'feel this disk at its 
> teeth' ?

While an 'end-to-end' test using PG is fine, I think it would be easier 
to determine if the drive is behaving correctly by using a simple test 
program that emulates the storage semantics the WAL expects. Have it 
write a constant stream of records, fsync'ing after each write. Record 
the highest record number flushed so far in some place that won't be 
lost with the drive under test (e.g. send it over the network to another 
machine).

Kill the power, bring the system back up again and examine what's at the 
tail end of that file. I think this will give you the worst case test 
with the easiest result discrimination.

If you want to you could add concurrent random writes to another file 
for extra realism.

Someone here may already have a suitable test program. I know I've 
written several over the years in order to test I/O performance, prove 
the existence of kernel bugs, and so on.

I doubt it matters much how long the power is turned of. A second should 
be plenty time to flush pending writes if the drive is going to do so.





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