Testing throughput for SAS server

[vkrishna]

Hello All,

We have SAS 9.4 office analytics deployment. We are testing throughput using the sasiotest.exe tool from the SAS app server to the windows file share server. It seems we are getting the write - 140 MB/sec and read - 150 MB/sec throughput with a single instance of sasiotest. If we run multiple concurrent sessions of sasiotest the throughput values for each session are 30 Mb/sec for Read and Write. Any suggestions on these throughput recommendations from sas server to the permanent filesystem?

Is it ok to run multiple sasiotest sessions to test throughput?

SAS server configuration:

SAS 9.4 M6 - 8 Cores

80 GB RAM

OS - Windows Server 2012 R2

File share server:

4 Cores

32 GB RAM

50 TB storage

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Windows Server 2012 R2

[SASKiwi]

The documentation for SASIOTEST suggests running multiple instances as long as there minimal other disk activity to mimic multiple concurrent jobs: Doc 

The SAS recommendation is that you should be seeing at least 100MB per sec per core throughput, so the figures you are getting look slow. 

[vkrishna]

Thank you @SASKiwi for SAS document.

[Kurt_Bremser]

Our server (2 cores) works on a SAN, with a continuous net rate of 300 MB/s.

So you should get better storage. A Windows-based NAS is hardly adequate. Your storage should be attached to your SAS server with at least 8 Gbit fibre-optic bandwidth, or you'll be permanently I/O bound.

[vkrishna]

Thank you @Kurt_Bremser.

Any recommendations on our current Pure Storage type?

[Kurt_Bremser]

You should connect your PureStorage directly via fibre-optic SAN to your SAS server.

[vkrishna]

@Kurt_Bremser 

I discussed this with my internal team. They told me that both servers are VMs and not connected directly. SAS server running with 16 GB fiber channel and file server runs over 10 GB network connection.

[Kurt_Bremser]

If you get only 150 MB/s over a 10 Gbit connection, then someone messed up big time.

Or they are simply feeding you BS to avoid work.