[CentOS] recommend benchmarking SW

[Ross Walker]

On Nov 3, 2009, at 8:22 AM, Alan McKay <alan.mckay at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hey folks,
>
> We've got some new hardware and are trying to figure out what best to
> do with it.   Either run CentOS right on the bare metal, or
> virtualize, or several combination options.   Mainly looking at :
>
> - CentOS on bare metal
> - CentOS on ESXi 4.0 with local disk
> - CentOS on ESXi with 1 VM running Openfiler to serve disk to other  
> VMs
>
> And want to benchmark these 3 scenarios
>
> So far all we have is a dd-based disk IO benchmark.
>
> What else can you all recommend.
>
> BTW, we also ideally want to try each of the above with a Postgres DB
> as well (and once without)

Take a look at iozone it is a little dated, but still good and is  
cross platform so you can can have a level playing field between  
Linux, Windows and Solaris.

I'd be interested in hearing your results. I will tell you it will be  
slower then bare metal, that is just a fact of life, but with adequate  
hardware it may be more then acceptable.

It would allow a VM to fail-over for another though which is key in a  
HA situation like storage.

-Ross