Re: Benchmarking a large server

2011/5/9 Chris Hoover<revoohc@gmail.com>:

> I've got a fun problem.
> My employer just purchased some new db servers that are very large.  The
> specs on them are:
> 4 Intel X7550 CPU's (32 physical cores, HT turned off)
> 1 TB Ram
> 1.3 TB Fusion IO (2 1.3 TB Fusion IO Duo cards in a raid 10)
> 3TB Sas Array (48 15K 146GB spindles)
> The issue we are running into is how do we benchmark this server,
> specifically, how do we get valid benchmarks for the Fusion IO card?
>   Normally to eliminate the cache effect, you run iozone and other benchmark
> suites at 2x the ram.  However, we can't do that due to 2TB>  1.3TB.
> So, does anyone have any suggestions/experiences in benchmarking storage
> when the storage is smaller then 2x memory?
Maybe this is a dumb question, but why do you care?  If you have 1TB RAM and just a little more actual disk space, it
seemslike your database will always be cached in memory anyway.  If you "eliminate the cach effect," won't the
benchmarkactually give you the wrong real-life results? 

Craig