Passmark Advanced Multi-User Tests

Version and / or Patch Used: 6.1

Developer Homepage: http://www. passmark.com/

Test Homepage: http://www.passmark.com/ >

Many users complain that I/O Meter is too complicated of a benchmark to replicate results so my quest to find an alternative was started. Passmark has added several multi-user tests that measure a hard drives ability to operate in a multi-user environment.

The tests use different settings to mimic basic multi-user operations as they would play out on your server. Variances is read / write percentage as well as random / sequential reads are common in certain applications, Web Servers read nearly 100% of the time while Database Servers write a small amount of data.

The Workstation test is the only single user environment and will be similar to how you use your system at home.

Several of the drives in our comparison chart are enterprise drives designed for use in nearline storage. The Western Digital Caviar Green is not advertised as an enterprise product, but with its low power consumption and high capacity I can see web hosting companies crossing their fingers to see high performance numbers in many of these tests.

The Caviar Green has a little less performance, but when used in an array that hits the performance of the PCIe and RAID controller, it wouldn't be much of an issue. You would need more drives to max the bus but I have yet to see anyone choose the number of drives in an array based on performance; capacity is king with today's high capacity web servers where companies throw as many websites on a server as they can.