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Large Scale System Administration of Windows NT Workshop, 1997
Adding Response Time Measurement of
CIFS File Server Performance to NetBench
Karl L. Swartz
Network Appliance
Abstract
The standard benchmark for NFS file server performance, SPEC SFS (also
known as LADDIS), measures performance in terms of both throughput --
the aggregate amount of data a file server can move across the network
per unit of time -- and response time -- the time required to service
an individual client request. NetBench, the most commonly used file
server benchmark for the CIFS (or SMB) protocol measures only
throughput. Network Appliance believes response time is as important a
performance metric as throughput, especially in the highly interactive
environment typical of CIFS networks, since throughput offers
little solace to a user waiting to access a file.
This paper documents the methodology and tools developed to measure
response time during a NetBench run. While cumbersome and primitive,
useful data has been produced, demonstrating that the fundamental idea
is sound. SPEC SFS has had a noticeable effect on vendors of NFS file
servers, motivating them to improve response time from an average of
50ms in 1993 to less than 10ms in 1997. Given the ability to measure
response time in the CIFS environment, hopefully a similar improvement
can be encouraged in CIFS file servers.
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