> On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 11:11:46AM -0500,
tytso@mit.edu wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 25, 2009 at 02:46:31AM +0300, Evgeniy Polyakov wrote:
> > > > [1]
http://samba.org/ftp/tridge/dbench/README
> > >
> > > Was not able to resist to write a small notice, what no matter what, but
> > > whatever benchmark is running, it _does_ show system behaviour in one
> > > or another condition. And when system behaves rather badly, it is quite
> > > a common comment, that benchmark was useless. But it did show that
> > > system has a problem, even if rarely triggered one :)
> >
> > If people are using benchmarks to improve file system, and a benchmark
> > shows a problem, then trying to remedy the performance issue is a good
> > thing to do, of course. Sometimes, though the case which is
> > demonstrated by a poor benchmark is an extremely rare corner case that
> > doesn't accurately reflect common real-life workloads --- and if
> > addressing it results in a tradeoff which degrades much more common
> > real-life situations, then that would be a bad thing.
> >
> > In situations where benchmarks are used competitively, it's rare that
> > it's actually a *problem*. Instead it's much more common that a
> > developer is trying to prove that their file system is *better* to
> > gullible users who think that a single one-dimentional number is
> > enough for them to chose file system X over file system Y.
>
> [ Look at all this email from my vacation...sorry for the delay ]
>
> It's important that people take benchmarks from filesystem developers
> with a big grain of salt, which is one reason the boxacle.net results
> are so nice. Steve more than willing to take patches and experiment to
> improve a given FS results, but his business is a fair representation of
> performance and it shows.
