Storage R Us

You can now download vdbench 4.07 for some heavy duty storage performance loading and modeling, as well as swat 3.00 for a nice tnfprobe and prex view of what's going with your storage subsystem. These tools work nicely across a variety of platforms - (notably Solaris and Windows .. vdbench has Mac OS X, AIX, HPUX, and linux support) - they're both java based (vdbench uses a C library for speedier workload generation) .. but be forewarned .. you'll need to be careful with vdbench, as you're wielding the power to directly modify any raw devices you can see from the OS which can potentially overwrite existing data and labels (ie: think dd on steroids) - so use proper safety when testing, (or just use files on filesystems)!!

UPDATE: vdbench is now here, and the latest SWAT 3.02 is over here .. oh, and here's the official support statement:

“Swat and Vdbench are tools delivered and supported by the Sun Microsystems, Inc. Strategic Application Engineering (SAE) – Storage Performance Benchmarking Group (SPBG). It is the responsibility of SPBG to maintain, support, and enhance these tools, not the official Sun Service department. Additionally, the tools are supported for internal Sun use and Sun partners only – not the end users.” This is the official statement of support and its purpose is to make clear to the end user that Sun does not support these tools in its typical product fashion. However, if the tools are used in cooperation with Sun and/or one of its partners, for example in a sales situation, or when the tools are used to resolve a customer performance problem, then the tools will be supported by SPBG via the Sun field representative.