SQLIO performance test

I always love SQLIO for disk access performance test. Recently with the arrival of a Intel 520 SSD, I started to feel curious about its performance improvement.

Below is how I test it.

The command:

SQLIO -kR -t1 -s30 -f64 -b2 -i64 -BN i:\testfile.dat >> test.txt

Parameters description:

sqlio v1.5.SG
1 thread reading for 30 secs from file C:\RamDisk\Temp\testfile.dat
using 2KB IOs over 128KB stripes with 64 IOs per run
buffering set to not use file nor disk caches (as is SQL Server)
size of file C:\RamDisk\Temp\testfile.dat needs to be: 8388608 bytes

Test result.

Disk	NCQ	Environment	IOs/sec	MBs/sec	Comments
Seagate 7200RPM	No	Host, Windows server 2008 R2	484	0.94	ST3750640NS
WD 7200 RPM	Yes	Host	7,504	14.65	WD1002FBYS
WD VelociRaptor 10k RPM	Yes	Host	13,782	26.91	WD1500ADFD
SSD Intel 520	N/A	Guest, Windows server 2008 R2	7,747	15.13	Hyper-V 2.0
SSD Intel 520	N/A	Guest, Windows server 2000	20,244	39.54	Hyper-V 2.0
SSD Intel 520	N/A	Host	12,646	24.70	Hyper-V 2.0
RAM DISK	N/A	Guest, Windows Server 2000	20,622	40.27	Dataram RAMDisk v4.0
RAM DISK	N/A	Host	106,945	208.87	Dataram RAMDisk v4.0

Conclusions:

• When NCQ is enabled for traditional hard disk, SQLIO is not reliable any more;
• RAM DISK is still much faster than SSD
• Windows server 2000 is much faster than windows server 2008 R2    :-)
• Putting the whole guest OS into RAM Disk doesn't help.