Storage testing 'could do better'

Load DynamiX has revealed the results of its inaugural IT end-user Storage Performance Validation Strategy survey. The study surveyed over 100 storage engineers and architects to gain an understanding of storage priorities, deployment strategies and investments in new technologies (i.e. object, Software defined Storage (SDS), cloud, and virtualised storage systems).

Several notable data points came from this survey:
1. 65% of all IT organisations surveyed said that they are doing some sort of testing in pre-production lab environments. Included in those testing methodologies are both IT organisations using rudimentary freeware tools such as Iometer and more sophisticated sites using Load DynamiX performance validation solutions. Unfortunately, most sites were using freeware tools that can’t emulate the scale or accurate workload conditions of the actual production environment.

2. Only 36% of the respondents understand the I/O profiles of their production workloads. 64% can’t accurately evaluate new storage systems or align purchasing and deployment decisions to performance requirements. To eliminate both over-provisioning, which results in wasted spending, and under-provisioning, which results in unhappy users, realistic workload I/O pro?les of production application environments are essential. When combined with Load DynamiX load generation appliances, a comprehensive understanding of storage performance can be easily obtained before cutting over to live deployment.

3. 49% of respondents are evaluating new technologies such as object, SDS, cloud and virtualised storage environments. These innovative technologies are making it more difficult than ever to predict the performance of applications on new storage architectures and approaches. Most disruptive to storage performance predictability is moving to a Software Defined Storage approach, such as those based on CEPH or OpenStack.

4. 54% of those surveyed are planning on implementing Flash storage arrays to their storage estate within the next year. Given that flash storage can cost 3x to 5x more than traditional spinning media, it is essential to determine which workloads should move to flash and which should be deployed on traditional HDD or hybrid storage arrays. To make flash storage affordable, inline deduplication and compression are essential. Unfortunately, enabling such features can have a dramatic impact on performance and hence, accurate investment analysis of Flash arrays. Accurate workload modeling and performance validation will be essential for proper investment and deployment decisions.

“Load DynamiX is becoming the defacto standard in empowering IT architects and engineers to fully assess the effects that new storage technologies will have on their key business applications,” said Len Rosenthal, vice president of marketing for Load DynamiX. “With this survey, we are taking the pulse of the industry and attempting to stay lock-step with our customers and their infrastructure performance validation needs.”