Adding response time measurement of CIFS file server performance to NetBench
Karl L. Swartz · 1997
The standard benchmark for NFS file server perform-ance, SPEC SFS (also known as LADDIS), measures performance in terms of both throughput—the aggre-gate 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 re-sponse time is as important a performance metric as throughput, especially in the highly interactive envi-ronment typical of CIFS networks, since throughput offers little solace to a user waiting to access a file. This paper documents the methodology and tools de-veloped 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, hope-fully a similar improvement can be encouraged in CIFS file servers. 1.