SMB random read

In Figure 1 a random-read FIO workload is running against a file system using SMB-connected shares. The workload is scaled from 1 to 128 jobs running on the KVM guest. The storage space is provided from the protocol server contributing an additional 64 GiB of page cache.

SMB shows some unusual behavior, with a peak at 64 jobs and a valley at 32 jobs for throughput. We see a gradual increase until 16 jobs and then a drop at 32.