IO and filesystem benchmark is a complex topic. No single benchmarking tool is good in all situations. Here is a small overview about different benchmarking tools:
Block Storage:
- IOMeter – Highly customizable and allows to coordinate multiple clients. Needs a Windows PC for the coordination application. Developed by Intel. On Linux, take maximum rates of older (at least 2006.07.27 and earlier) with a pinch of salt because the submission method was not optimal.
File System (synthetic):
- FFSB – Flexible Filesystem Benchmark. Very neat benchmarking for Linux. Good customization of workload. NFS benchmarking (net-ffsb) a bit unsound.
- Filebench – Extremely powerful, but originally developed for Solaris. Linux support isn’t good.
- sysbench – Mainly a DB benchmarking tool, but also basic filesystem benchmarking tool.
- bonnie – Seems to be obsolete.
- bonnie++ – C++ port of bonnie. Easy, but seems not to be very customizable.
File System (workload):
- Postmark – Simulates the IO behavior of a mail server. Too small to stress good IO systems.
Stony Brook University and IBM Watson Labs have published a highly recommended journal paper in the “Transaction of Storage” about file system benchmarking, in which they present different benchmarks and their strong and weak points: A nine year study of file system and storage benchmarking. The article clearly points out that the results of most benchmarks at least questionable.