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Develop tool for AFS performance benchmarking

Project ID: 
159
Current stage: 
Manager: 
What: 

Description: We lack the ability to measure in any meaningful way how changes to the configuration of our file servers and associated disk hardware affect AFS performance. This project will produce a realistic AFS benchmarking tool which will remedy this lack.

Deliverables: An AFS benchmarking tool as described above

Why: 

Customer: School

Case statement: To get the best out of our file server hardware and to avoid future performance issues, we need an accurate measure of the affect of changes to file servers and the ability to measure how stressed our file server are. This project would produce a tool which would enable us to perform these measurements much more accurately. It might also be of use in procuring future hardware.

When: 

Status: proposal

Timescales: The identification of suitable measuring and benchmarking tools would require week's work. The actual monitoring of file server activity should probably run for at least 4 weeks though of course this part of the project would require little or no effort.

Priority: medium - high

Time:

How: 

Proposal: A model will be produced of the typical activity pattern of an AFS file server and its associated disk hardware. We will then attempt to reproduce this pattern. It may be that this can be done using existing benchmarking tools or it may be that more accurate results can be produced by writing scripts which model typical user activity.

Resources: Test server and disk array, possibly several client machines

Plan:

  • investigate suitable monitoring tools
  • install tools and/or reconfigure file servers as necessary
  • Run monitoring tools for several weeks
  • Analysis results and produce model of AFS activity
  • Investigate available benchmarking tools for suitability for reproducing model produced above
  • configure/write tool to reproduce pattern
  • run tool on test server and check pattern of usage produced.
Other: 

Dependencies: None

Risks:

Milestones

Proposed date Achieved date Name Description
2010-03-19 Monitoring tool Identify suitable monitoring tools and configure selected file servers accordingly
2010-03-19 Monitor Run monitoring tools on selected servers for several weeks
2010-03-19 Analysis Analysis results of monitoring and produce model of typical AFS activity
2010-03-19 benchmark tools Investigate available benchmarking tools for suitability for reproducing model produced in previous milestone
2010-03-19 Produce tool Configure existing benchmark tool or produce new one to reproduce AFS activity pattern
2010-03-19 Test Test tool to check it produces the expected results