Storage Performance Testing in the Cloud

Based on experience testing distributed storage systems in several public clouds, this talk will consist of two parts. The first part will cover approaches for characterizing and measuring storage workloads generally. The second part will cover the additional challenges posed by testing in public clouds. Contrary to popular belief, no two cloud servers are ever alike. Even the same server can exhibit wild and unpredictable performance swings over time, so new ways of analyzing performance are critical in these environments.

Jeff Darcy has worked on network and distributed storage systems for 20 years, including an instrumental role in developing MPFS (a precursor of modern pNFS) while at EMC. He is currently a member of the GlusterFS architecture team at Red Hat and frequently gives talks and tutorials about topics related to cloud storage.