5.27. Ceph RBD performance testing

status

ready

version

1.0

Abstract

This test plan aims to provide set of tests to identify Ceph RBD performance against given Ceph cluster by using of Wally tests.

5.27.1. Test Plan

The purpose of this document is to describe the environment and performance test plan for benchmarking Ceph block storage (RBD) performance.

The main goals are:

  • Define test approach, methodology and benchmarking toolset for testing Ceph block storage performance

  • Benchmark Ceph performance for defined scenarios

5.27.1.1. Preparation

This test plan is performed against existing Ceph cluster. Single VM is created for running tests on every compute node. Before running IO load storage devices are filled with pseudo-random data.

5.27.1.2. Execution Strategy

All tests are executed sequentially on all dedicated virtual machines. Number of IO load threads per VM depends on test phase. Every test starts with 30 second warm-up, which is not included in test results, followed by 180 second test load phase. At any given time a single VM per compute node generates IO load with given number of threads.

Block size for small block read/write operation is chosen to be 4K, since using smaller blocks is not reasonable because a) most modern HDD drives have physical sector size equal to 4KB and b) default Linux virtual memory page size equals to 4KB too. Larger block sizes provides no additional information since maximal I/O operations per second value is constant due to HDD mechanics.

Block size for large block sequential read/write operations has no certain limitations except being bigger than Ceph block size (4MB), so value of 16MB was chosen.

5.27.1.3. Test tool

For benchmarking Ceph performance new tool (Wally) was developed. It uses Flexible IO (fio) as load generator.

5.27.1.4. Test types

Following load scenarios are selected for Ceph benchmarking:

  • Average random read IOPS for small (4KB) blocks as function of thread count

  • Average random write IOPS for small (4KB) blocks, both for direct and synchronous mode, as function of thread count

  • Average linear read throughput for large (16MB) blocks, as function of thread count

  • Average linear write throughput for large (16MB) blocks, as function of thread count

  • Maximal synchronous random write IOPS for small (4K) blocks with latency not exceeding some predefined value.

  • Maximal random read IOPS for small (4K) blocks with latency not exceeding some predefined value.

  • Maximal amount of threads (virtual machines) can be served from storage with given SLA.

Every load scenario is executed for different number of simultaneous threads.

Actual values for scenario parameters are defined in section “Load Description”

Disk operations with small block size shows maximum IO operations rate under sustained load, moving bottleneck to disks, while sequential operations with large block sizes allows to estimate system performance when bottleneck is network.

5.27.1.5. Test Measurements and Metrics

During every test run raw metrics are collected at least once per second. Collected data are reported after test run. Report should include median value for a metric, 95% confidence interval and standard deviation value. Charts can be generated for selected metrics.

Following metrics are collected on each host for all test scenarios:

  • CPU usage per core and total

  • RAM utilization

  • Network throughput and IOPS on both replication and public interfaces

  • Throughput, IOPS and latency per storage device for each participating storage devices

Following metrics are additionally collected on test VM depending on test type:

  • Random read/write tests:

    • Storage IOPS per thread

    • Storage operations latency

  • Sequential read/write tests

    • Storage throughput

5.27.1.6. Expected Results and Pass/Fail Criteria

5.27.1.6.1. Pass/Fail Criteria

A test run is considered as failed if one or more test loads is not completed without errors.

5.27.1.6.2. Expected results

No certain expected results are provided since the purpose of this testing effort is to create benchmarking framework and collect baseline data for described environment.

The only requirement is that pass criteria are fulfilled.

However, results difference between test runs by more than 10% for same test scenarios should be explained. This value is based on test execution experience (results variation is about 5%).

5.27.1.7. Load Description

  • Random write in synchronous mode using 4k block size. 1, 5, 10, 15, 25 and 40 threads

  • Random write in direct mode using 4k block size. 1 thread

  • Random read using 4k block size. 1, 5, 10, 15, 25, 40, 80 and 120 threads

  • Number of VMs conforming SLA (4K block size, 60 MBps, 100 IOPS for read/write, 30 ms latency)

  • Sequential read, direct, 16m block size, 1, 3 and 10 threads

  • Sequential write, direct, 16m block size, 1, 3 and 10 threads

All test loads should be run with default and optimal size of placement groups.

5.27.1.8. Test Environment

The environment description includes hardware specification of servers, network parameters, operation system and Ceph deployment characteristics.

5.27.1.8.1. Hardware

This section contains list of all types of hardware nodes (table below is an example).

Parameter

Value

Comments

model

e.g. Supermicro X9SRD-F

CPU

e.g. 6 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 v2 @ 2.10GHz

role

e.g. compute or network

5.27.1.8.2. Network

This section contains list of interfaces and network parameters. For complicated cases this section may include topology diagram and switch parameters (table below is an example).

Parameter

Value

Comments

network role

e.g. provider or public

card model

e.g. Intel

driver

e.g. ixgbe

speed

e.g. 10G or 1G

MTU

e.g. 9000

offloading modes

e.g. default

5.27.1.8.3. Software

This section describes installed software (table below is an example).

Parameter

Value

Comments

OS

e.g. Ubuntu 16.04

Ceph

e.g. Jewel

5.27.2. Reports

Test plan execution reports: