Workstation Storage: Modeling, CAD, Programming, And Virtualization

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We use a mixture of real-world and synthetic benchmarks to quantify storage performance in our reviews. But how do you know our methodology is sound? We decided to test several workstation-oriented apps in order to generate real-world performance data.

AutoCAD: Editing Project

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Overall StatisticsHeader Cell - Column 1
Elapsed Time01:41
Read Operations2803
Write Operations912
Data Read12.11 MB
Data Written6.93 MB
Disk Busy Time0.21 s
Average Data Rate91.18 MB/s

In order to provide a good counterpoint to LightWave 3D, we wanted a trace that represented those who primarily draft their modeling work in 2D. Compared to LightWave 3D, though, AutoCAD's storage profile looks very similar. The majority of operations continue to occur at a queue depth of one, and a majority of the transferred data is random in nature. Interestingly, editing in AutoCAD involves a lot of smaller transfer sizes. According to our trace, 61% of all operations have a size of 512 bytes. Even though our CAD example contains a lot of draft detail, this trend seems to be independent of project composition.

I/O Trends:

  • 92% of all operations occur at a queue depth of one
  • 81% of all data transferred is random
  • 61% of all operations are 512 B in transfer size
  • 20% of all operations are 8 KB in transfer size