I recently bootstrapped a single ESXi host with VSAN 6.2 see Install VSAN 6.2 on a Single ESXi Host and wanted to test performance before installing any virtual machines. My goal was to determine if everything is working – consider this a simple stress test, nothing more. If you are interested in conducting more comprehensive Virtual SAN testing I would encourage you to read the Virtual SAN Performance Testing series by Wade Holmes on the VMware vSphere Blog.
I began by downloading the latest VMware I/O Analzyer fling – it is downloaded as a .zip file and needs to be extracted to expose the .OVA file.
Note for Mac Users: I was unable to unzip the archive by double-clicking on it or by attempting to open it with the Archive Utility. Instead I had to use the command line. I simply typed: unzip /Users/toddsimmons/Downloads/vmware-io-analyzer-1.6.2.zip I also had difficulty using the VMware Web Host Client. I was unable to deploy the .OVA has a New virtual machine using Google Chrome Version 54, but was successful using Firefox 49.
To deploy the OVA file simply right-click on your ESXi host and select Create/Register VM. Next, select Deploy a virtual machine from an OVF or OVA file. The remaining property pages are self-explanatory. Before powering on the vmware-io-analyzer virtual machine I created a larger, 20 GB, Hard disk 2 by right-clicking on the virtual machine and choosing Edit Settings.
Once you have finished, power-on the virtual machine. Note: DHCP is required to lease an IP address. Once the VM has powered on, open the console and login as root with the password vmware.
Now open a web browser and connect to the vmware-io-analyzer. On the home page select Workload Configuration.
In the Host list enter the IP Address of your ESXi host in the Hostname field along with the Root Password, then click Add New Host.
In the Add Workload Entry I used the Iometer Test Type and the 4k_100read_100rand.icf Workload
Under the Workload Configuration modify the Duration to 3600 sec (1-hour). It is important that you set the duration to at least one hour, in the results below you can see that it takes some time to “warm up”. When finished click the Run Now button. Here are my results.
Here is the time series chart of the caching device SAMSUNG SM951 MZ-VPV256HDGL2 M.2 256GB PCIe x4 NVMe.
These are the results from the storage device SAMSUNG PM1635 MZ-ILS3T20 2.5″ 3.2TB SATA III 12G Mixed-use Enterprise Solid State Disk
