[CentOS] Random Disk I/O Tests

Thu Aug 28 18:22:47 UTC 2014
Matt <matt.mailinglists at gmail.com>

I have two openvz servers running Centos 6.x both with 32GB of RAM.
One is an Intel Xeon E3-1230 quad core with two 4TB 7200 SATA drives
in software RAID1.  The other is an old HP DL380 dual quad core with 8
750GB 2.5" SATA drives in hardware RAID6.  I want to figure out which
one has better random I/O performance to host a busy container.  The
DL380 currently has one failed drive in the RAID6 array until I get
down to replace it, will that degrade performance?  Is there an easy
way to test disk I/O?  On a plain Gigabyte file copy the software
RAID1 box seems to be twice as fast.