UNIX I/O Performance Measurement Methodologies Applied To Old And New Storage Technologies

Mark Cohen Austrowiek–Pierluigi Grassi
May 2002

In this document we’ll provide a general overview of UNIX I/O performance and their operating system tools that measure internal server disks and how these tools can be applied to modern external storage arrays and eventually a SAN environment. In particular we’ll describe the current storage architecture by means of integrating native system tools and storage vendor software in order to obtain information as performance measurements, physical disk mapping and more. In addition we’ll provide some considerations  when planning and configuring the I/O systems in order to improve  performance.