Calypso Launching TestMyworkload.Com

Calypso Systems, Inc. launches TestMyWorkload.com web site, a community based website that allows IT managers, storage professionals and end-users to download a free applet to capture real world storage workloads on their datacenter, server, desktop or laptop computer storage.

Users can upload workload captures and use the website’s data visualization and data analytics tools to view various workload metrics including IO/s, bandwidth, data transfers, LBA hit and IO stream maps and advanced metrics including data compression ratios, Data deduplication ratios and spatial and temporal locality of reference. Calypso offers both free and monthly subscription memberships to view, analyze and share their real world storage workloads. Download/Capture applets are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS or users can contact customer support if they have other OSs.

Real world workload testing has been called the ‘Holy Grail’ of storage testing. Real World storage workload tests are increasingly important as system designers and SSD OEMs continue to optimize the software stack and SSDs for advanced workloads, storage tiering, virtualization, hyperconverged storage, data reduction, data encryption, packetization, endurance and more.

“SSD performance is highly dependent on the workload that the storage sees,” says Eden Kim, CEO, Calypso. “Further, workload IO streams are changed at every level of hardware and software abstraction meaning that the workload the SSD sees is very different than the workload that is generated in user space. The Real World Workloads that your SSD sees may have little or nothing to do with published specifications because the synthetic benchmark workloads that SSD OEMs use to test and optimize SSDs may differ from your Real World Storage Workloads.“

“Capturing and analyzing Real World SSD/HDD Workloads can help users understand what kind of workloads their storage can best handle. System designers and architects can use this information to design and validate their storage tiering strategies. TestMyWorkload.com focuses on capturing the storage workload at the block IO level but can also be used at the file system, LUN, array or virtualized storage layer. TestMyWorkload.com also helps end-users understand whether the SSD they purchase is optimized for their specific use case, if they are buying ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’ storage performance, and whether the SSD will show the endurance and cycle life as warranted,” added Kim.

The TestMyWorkload.com website also offers tutorials, examples, capture analysis and white papers to help users analyze the IO Captures that they upload. The free version allows unlimited capture uploads while the monthly subscription membership provides more advanced data analytics and workload metrics. Corporate and advanced users can contact Calypso to inquire about custom capture programs, advanced workload analysis, test services to test and qualify SSDs to their real world workloads and IPF real world workload testers to replay or scale captured workloads.

Calypso is a developer and manufacturer of test and measurement equipment for solid state storage.  It offers both industry standard test equipment as well as third party test services.  The Calypso RTP tester is the Reference Test Platform for the SNIA Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification (PTS) and Calypso is the official SNIA PTS Test House.