Installation and Configuration Guide for Linux® Workstations

NOTE If you are using XFS and unwritten extent flagging was disabled when creating the filesystem, the RESERVE
pre-allocation method is not available for it. For more information about unwritten extent flagging, consult the
Man page for mkfs.xfs. Type man mkfs.xfs in a terminal.
Test filesystem performance
Each standard filesystem comes with its own set of tools to measure performance.
XFS comes with the xfs_db command line tool for troubleshooting various aspects of the filesystem, including
fragmentation. For information on using the xfs_db tool, consult the man page for xfs_db.
Stone and Wire comes with a command line tool to measure filesystem performance called sw_io_perf_tool.
This tool simulates I/O requests (audio and/or video) that would be issued by the Visual Effects and Finishing
application, and reports the throughput and maximum latency of all the requested I/O operations.
Use sw_io_perf_tool to measure read and write performance of a volume declared and mounted by Stone
and Wire. Several options are available to simulate many file formats and writing/reading patterns. Launching
the command will display a list of available options.
To list all options available for sw_io_perf_tool, open a terminal and type
/usr/discreet/sw/tools/sw_io_perf_tool -h .
To test a standard filesystem partition's performance for a specific resolution, Run
/usr/discreet/sw/tools/sw_io_perf_tool where specifies a partition ID (0 to
7), and can be a combination of several media format attributes.
./sw_io_perf_tool -p7 -v 1600,900
The command displays the throughput (in MB/sec) and maximum IO latency detected (in ms), as shown
below:
Running Stone+Wire IO Performance Test (Partition 7)
Video: 1 stream(s) of HDTV @ 10bit
Proxy: None
Audio: None
This test will take approximately 11 seconds
*** Read Test ***
Bandwidth: 275.456 MB/s
Frame Rate: 39.351 Frames/s
You may also use sw_io_perf_tool with custom resolutions. For example, to test read performances for
frames with a width of 1600 pixels and a height of 900 pixels: Max Latency: 335.284 ms
Notes:
■ The command can be run while other operations are ongoing to simulate how the application will behave
under these conditions.
■ The media used by sw_io_perf_tool is allocated and freed automatically.
■ sw_io_perf_tool will not reserve any bandwidth on the storage device.
■ Partitions/Volumes must be properly configured in the Stone and Wire configuration file.
68 | Chapter 6 Software configuration