9/22/2015

Random vs. Sequential explained. | Open-E Blog

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Random vs. Sequential explained.

(http://blog.open-e.com/random-vssequential-explained/)
Very often, storage product users do not know what kind of performance numbers to expect in real
operations. Why do storage vendors claim such great performance when measured by an industry
accepted reference tool like IOmeter, but in production database applications are often very slow?
The biggest difference comes from how the data is being read from the disk. Is it in sequential blocks
or is it scattered in random blocks all over the drive? How big of a difference does a sequential data
pattern vs. a random data pattern make? This may be obvious for experienced users but we receive a
lot of questions about it; so a short and easy to follow example is in order.
To show examples of best and worst performance results with IOmeter, we can use a local RAID5
controller with 3 hard disks. When running RAID5 with only 3 hard disks we do not expect to see great
performance numbers, but it will be enough to show the difference elicited by using different test
patterns.

Test

Transfer

Percent

Percent

Percent

Percent

MB /

IO /

Pattern

Request Size

Sequential

Random

Write

Read

second

second

2KB

100

100

24,75

12674

2KB

100

100

52,17

26708

2KB

100

33

67

0,75

383

64KB

100

100

103,82

1661

64KB

100

100

94,06

1504

256KB

100

100

141,68

566

256KB

100

100

100,65

402

When you the read the marketing material about this particular server hardware you will find the
claim that it provides over 25,000 I/O per second and over 140MB/second. These are very nice figures.

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9/22/2015

Random vs. Sequential explained. | Open-E Blog

claim that it provides over 25,000 I/O per second and over 140MB/second. These are very nice figures.
But imagine you are going to index a database (similar to test case #3). Your server will actually
perform at about 400 I/O per second and below 1 MB/second. Test case #3 uses the default IOmeter
test pattern: 100% Random, 2kB Block Size, 33% writes and 67% reads. This test pattern shows very
poor results.
Believe me, I have seen plenty of very disappointed users running the default test pattern on IOmeter.
I recall an incident at the CEBIT show few years ago when a RAID controller vendor engineer was
preparing their demo and noticed that one IOmeter worker was running the default pattern; instead
of the desired 400MB/sec., it was showing only about 4MB/sec. This is 100 times slower!
Lets check the ratios between the best and worst results in our test case above.

IO / second:best / worst26708/ 383=70

MB / second: best / worst141,68 / 0,75 =189
So in the worst case we see a result 189 times slower than the marketing material claims.
What is the problem? Why does the default IOmeter test pattern show such poor results?
The main reason comes from the behavior of hard disk drives. The time to retrieve data with a
random seek is much longer than with a sector to sector seek. Also the block size has huge influence
on the performance results. In the worst-case combination of big/small block size and
sequential/random seek results vary by over a factor of 100.
How can we improve the performance of an application?
First the application needs to be designed to move bigger blocks of data a time. Second you need
disks with better average access time. SATA disks mostly spin with 7200rpm. So 10,000 rpm or 15,000
rpm disks will help significantly with a random pattern.
But recently more and more users are deploying SSDs to improve performance with a random access
pattern. We have tested 200GB Anobit SSD. (www.anobit.com (http://www.anobit.com/)) The SSD was
installed in a DSS V6 server and configured as an iSCSI target. The storage client was Windows 2008
with iSCSI Software Initiator.
Running the default test pattern on 2 workers in IOmeter we obtained the following results:

IO / sec

MB / sec

SSD powered iSCSI

10392

20.30

Local RAID5

383

0.75

So it looks like the single SSD powered iSCSI target was 27 times faster than the local Windows 2008
RAID5 while running the IOmeter default test pattern. The IOmeter default pattern is a good test if we
are running an application such as database indexing. The SSD powered iSCSI target was 27 times
better because the SSD drive has extremely good IOPS compared to SATA hard disks. But if you run
any sequential pattern the results are comparable. Here are IOmeter screenshots from the default
test pattern on SSD powered iSCSI Target vs. local hard disks powered with RAID5.

(http://blog.open-e.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/04/IOmeter-default_test_pattern_local_RAID.png?871a4d)

(http://blog.open-e.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/04/IOmeter-default_test_pattern_iSCSI_SSD.png?871a4d)

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Random vs. Sequential explained. | Open-E Blog

content/uploads/2011/04/IOmeter-default_test_pattern_iSCSI_SSD.png?871a4d)
These are some very interesting results. Not what you would necessarily expect.
So as you can see many factors influence overall storage performance. And understanding how
performance numbers are produced can give big insight into their validity. Careful use of
performance measurement tools can give you useful results. It is always a good idea to understand
how your storage clients will access their data on your servers.

Rating: 4.8/5 (4 votes cast)

DSS V6 (http://blog.open-e.com/tag/dss-v6/)
IOmeter (http://blog.open-e.com/tag/iometer/)
random (http://blog.open-e.com/tag/random/)
sequential (http://blog.open-e.com/tag/sequential/)
SSD (http://blog.open-e.com/tag/ssd/)

Related Project

Why a HOT-SPARE Hard Disk

is a bad idea?
(http://blog.opene.com/why-a-hot-sparehard-disk-is-a-bad-idea/)

Case Study: Virtualization

and High Availability in
drinking water management
with Open-E DSS V7
(http://blog.opene.com/case-studyvirtualization-and-highavailability-in-drinkingwater-management-withopen-e-dss-v7/)

Alternative possibilities the

small list of big ideas
(http://blog.opene.com/alternativepossibilities-the-small-list-ofbig-ideas/)

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