Checking storage for Standard Edition

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You can check whether your storage infrastructure meets Standard Edition performance requirements by using the stanctl benchmark fio command.

Before you begin

Ensure the following requirements are met:

A supported operating system: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and compatible distributions, Ubuntu, or Amazon Linux
Minimum 5 GiB free space per directory being tested
FIO is automatically installed if missing

About this task

The stanctl CLI tool includes a storage performance benchmarking feature that uses FIO (Flexible I/O Tester). This command helps you validate your storage infrastructure meets Standard Edition performance requirements before and after installation.

The benchmark runs five comprehensive tests on each storage directory:

Random read IOPS
Random write IOPS
Sequential read bandwidth
Sequential write bandwidth
Mixed workload with latency percentiles

Procedure

Run the benchmark command on all default storage directories.
```
stanctl benchmark fio
```
You can also use the alias:
```
stanctl bm fio
```
The benchmark runs on the following default directories based on your deployment type:
- Single-node deployment: Data (/mnt/instana/stanctl/data), Metrics (/mnt/instana/stanctl/metrics), Analytics (/mnt/instana/stanctl/analytics), Objects (/mnt/instana/stanctl/objects)
- Multi-node deployment (3-node): Backend node (instana-0) tests Objects directory only; Datastore node (instana-1) tests Data, Metrics, and Analytics directories
- Multi-node deployment (5-node): Backend node (instana-0) tests Objects directory; Datastore node (instana-1) tests Data and Metrics directories; Analytics node (instana-3) tests Analytics directory
Run the benchmark on a specific directory by using the --directory parameter.
```
stanctl benchmark fio --directory=/mnt/instana/stanctl/data
```

Review the console output that displays the storage performance summary.

The output includes the following sections:

Test configuration: Includes directory being tested, FIO version, I/O engine (libaio), direct I/O status, test duration (30 s with 5 s ramp-up), and disk utilization percentage.
Read performance: Includes read IOPS in ops/s and read bandwidth in MiB/s.
Write performance: Includes write IOPS in ops/s and write bandwidth in MiB/s.
Mixed workload performance: Includes total IOPS (combined read/write), read IOPS with percentage breakdown, write IOPS with percentage breakdown, total throughput in MiB/s, mean latency in ms, and latency percentiles for both read and write operations.

Example output:

STORAGE PERFORMANCE SUMMARY (/mnt/instana/stanctl/data)

TEST CONFIGURATION
                    Directory: /mnt/instana/stanctl/data
                  FIO Version: fio-3.28
                    I/O Engine: libaio
                   Direct I/O: 1
                Test Duration: 30 s (with 5 s ramp-up)
             Disk Utilization: (percentage)

READ PERFORMANCE
            Read IOPS (4 KiB BS): (ops/s)
     Read Bandwidth (128 KiB BS): (MiB/s)

WRITE PERFORMANCE
           Write IOPS (4 KiB BS): (ops/s)
    Write Bandwidth (128 KiB BS): (MiB/s)

MIXED WORKLOAD (4 KiB/80:16 KiB/20 blocksize, 5 GiB size)
               Total IOPS: (ops/s)
                Read IOPS: (ops/s) (65%)
               Write IOPS: (ops/s) (35%)
               Throughput: (MiB/s)
                 Mean Latency: (ms)

READ LATENCY PERCENTILES (MIXED WORKLOAD)
                          P50: (ms)
                          P90: (ms)
                          P95: (ms)
                          P99: (ms)

WRITE LATENCY PERCENTILES (MIXED WORKLOAD)
                          P50: (ms)
                          P90: (ms)
                          P95: (ms)
                          P99: (ms)

Access the detailed result files saved in the ~/.stanctl/benchmark/ directory.
Results are saved with the following naming convention:
- fio_benchmark_results_directory_name_timestamp.json - Complete raw FIO output for programmatic analysis
- fio_benchmark_results_directory_name_timestamp.txt - Human-readable detailed report with all metrics
Examples:
```
~/.stanctl/benchmark/fio_benchmark_results_mnt_instana_stanctl_data_20241229113000.json
~/.stanctl/benchmark/fio_benchmark_results_mnt_instana_stanctl_data_20241229113000.txt
```
Compare the benchmark results against the official storage requirements.

Ensure all metrics meet or exceed the documented minimum requirements for your deployment type.

Results

You validated that your storage infrastructure meets the performance requirements for Standard Edition.

For system requirements on Standard Edition, see the following references: