dbench scalability testing

[Nathan Dabney]

All,

  I work for the OSDL and we are attempting to script some dbench run-throughs to help us test the scalability of some of the samba/Linux kernel code.

  Currently I am running a sequence of dbench 4 through 75 in increments of 2, taking three samples of each increment and averaging them.  I have prepared some graphs of the results.

  The problem is, using a single kernel image (2.2.18) on the same hardware without any other system activity I can't get reliable results.

  I have taken precautions to exclude caching issues from the list of possible problems, but for some reason I still can't get the results to be reliable.

  I have posted the results at the following location, if anyone can offer some help, I would appreciate it.  Right now, booting and running the benchmark gives different results than running the benchmark after 8 or so hours of uptime.

http://63.68.113.130/~smurf/Samba%20dbench%20Results/sequence-2/

  If you want more info on the OSDL, please see www.osdlab.org - we have 4 & 8 and (soon to be available) 16 processor boxes for use by the open source community.  

Thanks,
Nathan Dabney
Open Source Development Lab