We want to run some performance benchmarks on the OS X windows machine with an SSD to make sure that performance is stable and as expected. Taras suggested using http://freecode.com/projects/fio since it's cross platform.

Fio seems like a nice tool for benchmarking but request is not well defined. Fio is a framework for building benchmarking tests. We will need far more detail as to the benchmarks you are looking for here. Could you provide a defined job file for this? http://git.kernel.dk/?p=fio.git;a=blob_plain;f=HOWTO;hb=HEAD

Based on info from bug 1001481 I set up a 70/30 profile to run: ; write speed at 70/30 [8k7030test] ; OS X doesn't support mutexes, so we use threading thread directory=/tmp/fio direct=1 rw=randrw refill_buffers norandommap randrepeat=0 ioengine=posixaio bs=8k rwmixread=70 iodepth=16 numjobs=16 runtime=60 group_reporting size=512m Unfortunately it looks like the posixaio engine is non-functional on OSX (and the windows and linuxaio engines obviously don't work since it's the wrong type of system): # fio 8k7030test.fio 8k7030test: (g=0): rw=randrw, bs=8K-8K/8K-8K/8K-8K, ioengine=posixaio, iodepth=16 ... fio-2.1.7 Starting 16 threads 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) 8k7030test: Laying out IO file(s) (1 file(s) / 512MB) fio: pid=7683, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=8451, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=8707, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=6403, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=8195, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=6659, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=4867, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=6915, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=5635, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=7427, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=6147, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=5891, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=7171, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=5123, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=7939, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 fio: pid=5379, err=-1/file:engines/posixaio.c:213, func=xfer, error=Unknown error: -1 Assertion failed: (pool), function sfree, file smalloc.c, line 347. fio(653,0x10eb1d000) malloc: *** error for object 0x7f9081402920: pointer being freed was not allocated *** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug Abort trap: 6 And interestingly, if you try to run the job multiple times in a row, you start getting the error: error: maximum number of jobs (4) reached. When it ran 16 just fine the first time. Rebooting the system lets you run 16 jobs again, so I suspect something some resource is being tied up with the failure.

I tried running this on my personal laptop (mavericks, not lion) just to check and see if it was something weird with the mini, and I got the same errors. Oh, and an added note on the mini, if you run it again with 4 jobs (by bumping down the number in the config), it again fails and then will only let you run with ONE job. Definitely issues with the code.

This machine is getting put back into the production pool with its original disk.