How to Benchmark Your System (CPU, File IO, MySQL) with Sysbench
sysbench is a benchmark suite which allows you to quickly get an impression of system performance which is important if you plan to run a database under intensive load. This article explains how to benchmark your CPU, file IO, and MySQL performance with sysbench.
1 Installing sysbench
On Debian/Ubuntu, sysbench can be installed as follows:
sudo apt-get install sysbench
On CentOS and Fedora, it can be installed from EPEL repository.
Add EPEL Repository:
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY*
yum -y install epel-release
yum -y update
Then install sysbench with yum:
yum install sysbench
Get an overview of sysbench options
Take a look at
man sysbench
to learn more about its parameters.
I will now perform simple three basic tests which tell you more about your CPU performance, file IO performance, and MySQL performance.
2 CPU Benchmark
You can benchmark your CPU performance as follows:
sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
root@server1:~# sysbench --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run
sysbench 0.4.12: multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark
Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1
Doing CPU performance benchmark
Threads started!
Done.
Maximum prime number checked in CPU test: 20000
Test execution summary:
total time: 23.8724s
total number of events: 10000
total time taken by event execution: 23.8716
per-request statistics:
min: 2.31ms
avg: 2.39ms
max: 6.39ms
approx. 95 percentile: 2.44ms
Threads fairness:
events (avg/stddev): 10000.0000/0.00
execution time (avg/stddev): 23.8716/0.00
root@server1:~#
You see a lot of numbers, the most important of it is the total time:
total time: 23.8724s
Of course, you must compare benchmarks across multiple systems to know what these numbers are worth.
3 File IO Benchmark
To measure file IO performance, we first need to create a test file that is much bigger than your RAM (because otherwise, the system will use RAM for caching which tampers with the benchmark results) - 150GB is a good value:
sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=150G prepare
Afterwards, we can run the benchmark:
sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=150G --file-test-mode=rndrw --init-rng=on --max-time=300 --max-requests=0 run
root@server1:~# sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=150G --file-test-mode=rndrw --init-rng=on --max-time=300 --max-requests=0 run
sysbench: /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.so.18: no version information available (required by sysbench)
sysbench 0.4.12: multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark
Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 1
Initializing random number generator from timer.
Extra file open flags: 0
128 files, 1.1719Gb each
150Gb total file size
Block size 16Kb
Number of random requests for random IO: 0
Read/Write ratio for combined random IO test: 1.50
Periodic FSYNC enabled, calling fsync() each 100 requests.
Calling fsync() at the end of test, Enabled.
Using synchronous I/O mode
Doing random r/w test
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
Done.
Operations performed: 600 Read, 400 Write, 1186 Other = 2186 Total
Read 9.375Mb Written 6.25Mb Total transferred 15.625Mb (53.316Kb/sec)
3.33 Requests/sec executed
Test execution summary:
total time: 300.0975s
total number of events: 1000
total time taken by event execution: 158.7611
per-request statistics:
min: 0.01ms
avg: 158.76ms
max: 2596.96ms
approx. 95 percentile: 482.29ms
Threads fairness:
events (avg/stddev): 1000.0000/0.00
execution time (avg/stddev): 158.7611/0.00
root@server1:~#
The important number is the Kb/sec value:
Read 9.375Mb Written 6.25Mb Total transferred 15.625Mb (53.316Kb/sec)
After the benchmark, you can delete the 150GB test file from the system:
sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=150G cleanup
4 MySQL Benchmark
To measure MySQL performance, we first create a test table in the database test with 1,000,000 rows of data:
sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword prepare
root@server1:~# sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword prepare
sysbench 0.4.12: multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark
No DB drivers specified, using mysql
Creating table 'sbtest'...
Creating 1000000 records in table 'sbtest'...
root@server1:~#
Replace the word yourrootsqlpassword with your MySQL root password in the above command. Do the same in the next commands.
Afterwards, you can run the MySQL benchmark as follows:
sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword --max-time=60 --oltp-read-only=on --max-requests=0 --num-threads=8 run
root@server1:~# sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=1000000 --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword --max-time=60 --oltp-read-only=on --max-requests=0 --num-threads=8 run
sysbench 0.4.12: multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark
No DB drivers specified, using mysql
Running the test with following options:
Number of threads: 8
Doing OLTP test.
Running mixed OLTP test
Doing read-only test
Using Special distribution (12 iterations, 1 pct of values are returned in 75 pct cases)
Using "BEGIN" for starting transactions
Using auto_inc on the id column
Threads started!
Time limit exceeded, exiting...
(last message repeated 7 times)
Done.
OLTP test statistics:
queries performed:
read: 2253860
write: 0
other: 321980
total: 2575840
transactions: 160990 (2683.06 per sec.)
deadlocks: 0 (0.00 per sec.)
read/write requests: 2253860 (37562.81 per sec.)
other operations: 321980 (5366.12 per sec.)
Test execution summary:
total time: 60.0024s
total number of events: 160990
total time taken by event execution: 479.3419
per-request statistics:
min: 0.81ms
avg: 2.98ms
max: 3283.40ms
approx. 95 percentile: 4.62ms
Threads fairness:
events (avg/stddev): 20123.7500/63.52
execution time (avg/stddev): 59.9177/0.00
root@server1:~#
The important number is the transactions per second value:
transactions: 160990 (2683.06 per sec.)
To clean up the system afterwards (i.e., remove the test table), run:
sysbench --test=oltp --db-driver=mysql --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword cleanup
5 Links
- sysbench: http://sysbench.sourceforge.net/
