Lies, Damn Lies and File Systems Benchmarks

There are lies, damn lies, and then benchmarks.” It’s an overused phrase but it does make a point: Benchmarks have become so abused that no longer are they used to provide useful information for making decisions or for improving solutions. While this is something we seem to inheritly know, it was recently backed up with solid data. The cliche, it turns out, is on the mark.

Recently a paper was published in Byte and Switch that examined nine years of storage and file system benchmarking. It’s an important paper. In this article we will summarize the paper’s findings. Looking ahead we plan to use them as the basis of future benchmarking results published in this column.

Yes, it‚Äôs that good…

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