New SPC-1 V3 Benchmark to Measure Storage Solutions

In a move that provides a major step forward in the industry’s ability to compare the latest generation of storage products, the Storage Performance Council (SPC) announced it has concluded the development and early use phases of its SPC-1 V3 benchmark.

This tool represents a refresh of the SPC benchmark technology.

“As one of the founding members of the SPC, IBM was proud to sponsor the first SPC-1 V3 result and will continue to rely on it to showcase the real-life performance advantages of our storage products,” said Alistair Symon, VP, XIV and storage development, IBM Corp.

As of February 1, 2017, a transitional period in which the first few SPC-1 V3 results were published on the SPC website has ended. Going forward, all SPC-1 benchmark results will be produced using SPC-1 V3. The SPC expects that such results will become even more important within the storage marketplace, in view of the diversity of storage hardware and software now available to customers.

“The SPC-1 V3 benchmark is designed from the ground up for scalability and extreme I/O throughputs,” said John Stephens, administrator, SPC. “SPC-1’s highly realistic data generation model is a dramatic advancement over the synthetic data generation models available in first generation compression and deduplication-aware load generators. It will reflect the realistic gains in space efficiency expected to occur in production environments when using compression and/or deduplication technology.“

Since it was founded in 1998, the SPC has sought to encourage storage innovations that matter to real life performance. Through trace based calibration, the SPC has developed benchmarks that are both faithful to production conditions and easy to use. SPC-1, in particular, has become a vital part of the storage marketplace, with almost two hundred published SPC-1 benchmark results. The key trends that propelled storage performance during the past decade, including clustering, virtualization, very large cache sizes, flash memory and hybrid storage architectures, are clearly recorded in the performance data offered on the SPC web site.

“Huawei values the robust and realistic assessments that it gets from industry standards like the SPC benchmarks, which align well with Huawei’s commitment to providing industry-leading storage products for its customers,” said Meng Guangbin, president, storage product line, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. “SPC-1 v3, with its audited and peer-reviewed results, gives Huawei the opportunity to compare our products with others on a level playing field based on objective metrics that reflect production conditions.“