110 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
110 lines
4.8 KiB
Plaintext
.\" $NetBSD: methodology.ms,v 1.3 2003/08/07 10:30:41 agc Exp $
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.\"
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.\" Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
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.\" All rights reserved.
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.\"
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.\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
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.\" are met:
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.\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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.\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
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.\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
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.\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
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.\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
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.\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
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.\" without specific prior written permission.
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.\"
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.\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
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.\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
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.\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
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.\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
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.\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
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.\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
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.\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
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.\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
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.\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
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.\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
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.\" SUCH DAMAGE.
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.\"
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.\" @(#)methodology.ms 6.2 (Berkeley) 4/16/91
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.\"
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.ds RH Methodology
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.NH
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Methodology
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.PP
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Our goal was to evaluate the performance of the target peripherals
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in an environment as much like our 4.2BSD UNIX systems as possible.
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There are two basic approaches to creating this kind of test environment.
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These might be termed the \fIindirect\fR and the \fIdirect\fR approach.
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The approach used by DEC in producing most of the performance data
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on the UDA50/RA81 system under VMS is what we term the indirect
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approach.
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We chose to use the direct approach.
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.PP
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The indirect approach used by DEC involves two steps.
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First, the environment in which performance is to be evaluated
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is parameterized.
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In this case, the disk I/O characteristics of VMS were measured
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as to the distribution of various sizes of accesses and the proportion
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of reads and writes.
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This parameterization of
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typical
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I/O activity was termed a
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``vax mix.''
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The second stage involves simulating this mixture of I/O activities
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with the devices to be tested and noting the total volume of transactions
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processed per unit time by each system.
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.PP
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The problems encountered with this indirect approach often
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have to do with the completeness and correctness of the parameterization
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of the context environment.
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For example, the
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``vax mix''
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model constructed for DECs tests uses a random distribution of seeks
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to the blocks read or written.
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It is not likely that any real system produces a distribution
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of disk transfer locations which is truly random and does not
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exhibit strong locality characteristics.
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.PP
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The methodology chosen by us is direct
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in the sense that it uses the standard structured file system mechanism present
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in the 4.2BSD UNIX operating system to create the sequence of locations
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and sizes of reads and writes to the benchmarked equipment.
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We simply create, write, and read
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files as they would be by user's activities.
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The disk space allocation and disk cacheing mechanism built into
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UNIX is used to produce the actual device reads and writes as well
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as to determine their size and location on the disk.
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We measure and compare the rate at which these
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.I
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user files
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.R
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can be written, rewritten, or read.
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.PP
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The advantage of this approach is the implicit accuracy in
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testing in the same environment in which the peripheral
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will be used.
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Although this system does not account for the I/O produced
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by some paging and swapping, in our memory rich environment
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these activities account for a relatively small portion
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of the total disk activity.
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.PP
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A more significant disadvantage to the direct approach
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is the occasional difficulty we have in accounting for our
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measured results.
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The apparently straight-forward activity of reading or writing a logical file
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on disk can produce a complex mixture of disk traffic.
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File I/O is supported by a file management system that
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buffers disk traffic through an internal cache,
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which allows writes to ba handled asynchronously.
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Reads must be done synchronously,
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however this restriction is moderated by the use of read-ahead.
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Small changes in the performance of the disk controller
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subsystem can result in large and unexpected
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changes in the file system performance,
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as it may change the characteristics of the memory contention
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experienced by the processor.
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.ds RH Tests
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.bp
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