topic Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ? in Operating System - OpenVMS

DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Robert Jacobs — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:08:50 GMT

Hi Everyone

I was wondering if somebody could point me in the right direction here.

The company I am working for needs to test I/O's to some SAN FC disk storage virtualization products. Does anybody know a program that does this function on OpenVMS 7.3-2 Perhaps there is a Decus program or a utility from lets say Diskeeper or I/O express etc... I have been away from OpenVMS for a while and do not know what HP or others could offer.

Thank you

Robert J.

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Andy Bustamante — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:28:40 GMT

What sort of test do you need? Would creating and reading backup save sets meet the requirements?

Andy

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Uwe Zessin — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 13:29:58 GMT

If you just want to do some I/Os, some things are possible to exercise the system:

- use volume shadowing to mirror two disks

- $ initialize /erase SAN_DISK: label

- use BACKUP /IMAGE or /PHYSICAL to read/write

- use "SYSGEN CREATE filespec"

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Robert Jacobs — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 15:12:56 GMT

Hi

The tests that I fell would be the best, are those that would be some sort of pattern test if possible i.e. write / read or compare type of program.

Does anybody know of such executeable programs out there? It could be a a DCL scripts as well.

Thank you again.

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Volker Halle — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 23:38:32 GMT

Robert,

it all depends on 'what' you want to test. If you want to verify correct operation of read/write IO, a BACKUP/PHYSICAL/VERIFY or /COMPARE could be the right tool.

If you want to test performance, there is a TEST command in the DISKBLOCK utility (from OpenVMS Freeware CD).

I've also used DISKPERF for performance testing:

http://www.pi-net.dyndns.org/jfp/english/diskperf.html

Volker.

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Rob Young_4 — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:12:51 GMT

Google is your friend. TESTDEV should
work for you. I forget which freeware CD
it is on but you can google it.

http://tinyurl.com/d4o6r

Rob

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Karl Rohwedder — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:13:37 GMT

Another one I use from time to tie is TESTDEV from the Freeware V4 archives at:

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/freeware/freeware40/testdev/

regards Kalle

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Peter Quodling — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 00:55:16 GMT

There used to be someone in Colorado Springs Storage Engineering, name of Ken Bates, I think, who was the expert on storage performance. google him, and see if he is still around and doing that sort of stuff.

Our good friend Hein, Vandenheuvel, who haunts this forum from time to time, has also been known to make the odd spindle groan under the load...

q

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Ian Miller. — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 03:52:11 GMT

Can anyone still remember how to drive UETP?

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Volker Halle — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 04:14:00 GMT

re: UETP

Ian,

login to the SYSTEST account and invoke @UETP - see SYS$TEST:UETP.COM

Volker.

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Uwe Zessin — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 06:53:43 GMT

What? Ian, don't tell me you don't have an URL to the UETP docs! ;-)

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Ian Miller. — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 07:51:48 GMT

Uwe, just for you :-)
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/82FINAL/aa-pv5nj-tk/00/00/59-con.html

UETP test disks by creating a small file on the disk, read and writing randomly to the file then extending the file and doing it again util the disk is 75% full. So its not a stress test but shows behaviour more like users.

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Ian Miller. — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 08:03:08 GMT

while I'm doing pointers to things

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/freeware/freeware70/diskblock/

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Galen Tackett — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 09:01:59 GMT

A couple of years back when I was at Raytheon, VMS Ambassador Al Meier got us a copy of an HP program called IOHAMMER that runs on VMS. It allows very flexible definitions of disk workloads that can be spread across multiple CPUs on an SMP system or even across multiple members of a cluster, I believe. Figuring it out was a bit complicated--since it wasn't really intended for general distribution, it has some rough edges and isn't well documented. I also found and fixed a small problem with the way it computed rates (an integer overflow issue.)

I don't have access to it any longer and don't recall what kind of license terms may have been specified--if there even were any in plain sight. And I don't know if it's something you can just get [at no charge] from your friendly HP rep, or not. Hopefully it's the former. Ideally HP would make source and all available someday...

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Robert Jacobs — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 11:34:44 GMT

WOW this forum is great

Thank you all for your input on my needs.

I will download the items listed and see what works for our lab test enviornment

Robert J.

Re: DISK STORAGE I/O TESTER DECUS or other Utility / Programs ?

Ian Miller. — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:22:34 GMT

Robert, please see
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33
about assigning points and assigned 0-10 points to each response. It helps to indicate the quality of answers for future readers as well as thanking people who responded.