Storage Developer Conference

All-flash arrays, server-side storage arrays and traditional arrays - all have a place in today's data center. But one thing is very clear: effectively testing these solutions requires new and evolving thinking. We need to implement new testing capabilities and practices to ensure both engineers and QA can meet their needs with unbiased, actionable data.

In this session, we'll examine the various types of testing tools currently available and some that are evolving. Whether limits-testing tools, benchmarks, traditional disk-testing tools, workload-generation tools, all must be able to test with high performance and high configurability for multi-LUN and multi-volume testing and data content.

We'll examine the changing landscape of workload acquisition and workload generation, especially for all-flash arrays that are increasingly being used with multiple applications. We'll see how the application I/O blender effect, although seemingly random on the surface, actually contains patterns that can and should be emulated to ensure an array is properly shaken down before it goes into service.

We'll touch on how rich statistical reporting and trending help testers to see how performance varies under changing conditions, showing how an array performs at varying levels of user loads, queue depths, and compound/outstanding requests.

Learning Objectives

Examine the various testing tools on the market
New testing capabilities and practices tEngineers and QA can validate their solutions with unbiased, actionable data
Learn how statistical reporting and trending help testers to see how performance varies under changing conditions