dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null bs=always

An announcement to all interested in the Data Storage Management Suite: the 10.05 beta release 2 is currently available for download. This release only supports OpenSolaris UNIX (2009.06 & 2010.03), Red Hat Linux 5.x and Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS. This will be expanded to Solaris 10 by the official release. Soon after, other Linux distributions will be supported. Note that for beta releases everything must be built from source which can be obtained from the download site.

The Beta Release 2 has some bug fixes. For more details on those fixes you can review the listing on the DSMS project in our bug tracker.

As this is still a beta and not official stable release (1 May, 2010), it is advised to not use this on a production and live system. It should be used for test purposes only and when a bug is found, it would be greatly appreciated if it were submitted to our bug repository.

Documentation is still being worked on and should be completed within the next 1.5 weeks. Note that it is unclear on whether a third beta release will become available before the stable release.

An announcement to all interested in the Data Storage Management Suite: the 10.05 beta release is currently available for download. This release only supports OpenSolaris UNIX (2009.06 & 2010.03) and Red Hat Linux 5.x. This will be expanded to Solaris 10 by the official release. Soon after, other Linux distributions will be supported.

In the beta, everything must be built and installed from source. You can download the source package from here. The README.txt highlights the installation instructions and so does the project page linked above.  Ensure that you have GCC and the GNU binutils installed for proper building and installation.

As this is still a beta and not official stable release (1 May, 2010), it is advised to not use this on a production and live system. It should be used for test purposes only and when a bug is found, it would be greatly appreciated if it were submitted to our bug repository.

While this product is in beta, time is now being spent to write a nicely detailed and thorough manual covering not only the suite and also various testing methodologies. To read a little more information about this suite of test tools, reference the project wiki and even my previous blog post.

It is official. The Data Storage Management Suite (hereafter, dsms) is still on schedule to be released by 1 May, 2010 for Solaris/OpenSolaris and Linux operating systems. A stable beta will be released in the beginning of March for general public use. I hope to hear some good feedback and suggestions. The dsms wiki page still needs some updating but for the most part the general information is about the same.

To recap, dsms provides a list of test tools (written in C and python) with some basic drive management tools with the intent to test, tune and manage data storage solutions. Equipped to run in both CLI and GUI, the user will have the capabilities to benchmark for performance, test data integrity and root out any data corruption, perform stress tests, view un-paged contents of data from a physical device to a file over a file system, send low level SCSI commands to further tests and manage a storage environment and more.

Here is some example usage of the diskanalysis tool (one of five binaries) as it runs in the CLI on Linux:

$ sudo diskanalysis /dev/sdb wr -s=65536 -m=1024 -i=1 -b=4 -l=sdb.log diskanalysis 10.05a Copyright 2009 Unovyx, LLC PID - 3494 Start time: Sun Feb 21 08:11:17.29 2010 ITERATION NUMBER 1 Sun Feb 21 08:11:17.29 2010 Transfer Size: 4096 Range Size: 1073741824 Seek Method: SEQUENTIAL Writing... END OF ITERATION NUMBER 1 Sun Feb 21 08:12:31.987 2010 Total KBs Read/Written: 1073741824 Total Iteration Time: 74.958 ITERATION NUMBER 1 Sun Feb 21 08:12:31.987 2010 Transfer Size: 4096 Range Size: 1073741824 Seek Method: SEQUENTIAL Reading... END OF ITERATION NUMBER 1 Sun Feb 21 08:13:09.503 2010 Total KBs Read/Written: 1073741824 Total Iteration Time: 37.516 END OF ITERATION(S) COMPLETION STATUS: PASSED

Here is example usage of the same tool when it comes across a data comparison error which could be a result of data corruption:

$ sudo diskanalysis /dev/sdb r -s=0 -m=127 -i=1 -b=2 -l=sdb.log diskanalysis 10.05a Copyright 2009 Unovyx, LLC PID - 3550 Start time: Sun Feb 21 08:14:13.690 2010 ITERATION NUMBER 1 Sun Feb 21 08:14:13.690 2010 Transfer Size: 2048 Range Size: 133169152 Seek Method: SEQUENTIAL Reading... Error. Data miscompare has been found on block number 0 END OF ITERATION NUMBER 1 Sun Feb 21 08:14:14.70 2010 Total KBs Read/Written: 2048 Total Iteration Time: 0.380 COMPLETION STATUS: FAILED

When the test runs, all information is written to the log output (in this case sdb.log). This includes not only the test summary but also an exact description of the error. If the error was a data corruption, then it would point to the location where the miscompare began and dump the expected and read buffer values.

Now here is an example screenshot of the datadump tool as it runs in the GUI on OpenSolaris:

The graphical version of DataDump differs from its command line counterpart in that the CLI version will dump physical data at the time of execution while the GUI provides more of a real-time feel as you traverse and read the device/file one block at a time.

Now here is some example screenshots of the drvtst python wrapper tool as it runs in the GUI on OpenSolaris:

The drvtst wrapper (drvtst.py) is an intuitive graphical environment offering support for the diskanalysis and scsigen tools of the dsms suite, along with various python written scripts. With drvtst the user can create an I/O profile, initiate it, monitor and manage all running process to even sending low level SCSI commands to the end (SCSI) disk devices.

This tab (above) displays the layout of how to monitor and manage your dsms applications. In the next release, the user will also be able to monitor details such as MB/s written/read, IOPs and more.

The last tab (above), gives the user an easy way to select a disk device and send a low level SCSI command to the disk device. This portion functions almost identical to its command line counterpart (scsigen), although the CLI version will present a little more detail in message output.

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We, at Unovyx, LLC are already planning the next release of the test suite which not only includes some more advance features and functionality but also a port to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7.

Note that we are always looking for support of our projects one way or another. That can be done in any number of ways. For instance, a donation can be made to the project through sourceforge.net (5% will be re-donated to SourceForge.net). Or if you are interested in sponsoring certain features or a porting to a new operating system (including Windows, AIX, FreeBSD, etc.), the proceeds will aid in not only obtaining the equipment but will also accelerate the process of development and testing until we have a nice and stable build. To sponsor the project please feel free to contact us and let us know what you are looking for.