HCI Performance testing made easy (Part 1)

How to create a customized performance test using X-ray.

X-Ray can do the following for the performance tester.

  • Model IO workloads using standard fio format
  • Create VMs based on user-specified criteria (CPUs, Memory, Number & Size of disks)
  • Provision the VMs  to a HCI cluster (Nutanix AHV, ESXi, Hyper-V)
  • Execute the workloads
  • Display and store the results

In particular X-Ray give the additional benefits that most workload generators do not

  • Specify and deploy workloads with different IO patterns and characteristics
    • Most workload generators create a uniform workload on all workers
  • Execute and terminate sub-workloads on a user-specified timeline
    • e.g. Begin workload 1 then introduce workload 2 and measure the interference
  • Introduce failure scenarios and measure the impact to performance

The files are in my X-ray GitHub