I've spotted a new Free VMware Performance measure tool for HCI systems called HCIBench. It is distributed as a “Fling” via VMware Labs site. Before downloading you must agree to the Tech Preview agreement, then the tool is available as a virtual appliance (OVF file).
You should not use this tool in production, but rather use it for proof of concept (POC) measurement of performance or so.
HCIBench stands for “Hyper-converged Infrastructure Benchmark”. It features Vdbench and Fio that make it easier to automate testing across an HCI cluster. The tool fully automates the end-to-end process of deploying test VMs, coordinating workload runs, aggregating test results, performance analysis and collecting necessary data for troubleshooting purposes.
The utility fully automates the process of performance benchmarking in larger clusters. Users simply specify the testing parameters they would like to run, and HCIBench instructs these
workload generators what to do on each and every node in the cluster.
HCIBench can be used for testing performance of VMware vSAN, but also for other Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Storage in VMware vSphere environment.
Free VMware Performance measure tool – The architecture:
The tool has been built by VMware Engineers.
The latest release is version 2.1 and here is what's been added/improved or fixed:
- Switched UI to dark theme
- Redesigned VMDK preparation methodology, which can complete much faster using RANDOM on deduped storage
- Added VMDK preparation process update
- Added Graphite port check into prevalidation
- Added vCenter/Host password obfuscation
- Added “Delete Guest VM” button
- Fixed Grafana display issue
- Fixed FIO blank results issue
- Bug fixes
You can follow the deployment and configuration via the User guide PDF available at VMware Labs site.
The application consists of 2 VMs actually:
- Controller VM
- Guest VM
While the controller VM's credentials are created during the setup, the guest VM's credentials are fixed and known. Here are the credentials for the Guest VM
login: root
pass: vdbench
The Controller VM comes with preinstalled software:
Ruby 2.3.0, Rubygem 2.5.1, Rbvmomi 1.8.2, RVC 1.8.0, sshpass 1.05, Apache 2.4.18, Tomcat 8.54, JDK 1.8u102, Fio 3.1.2, Graphite 1.15, Grafana 6.0.2, Python 3.5.4
The guest VM is preinstalled with JDK 1.8u102.
After deployment, connect to:
https://HCIBench_IP:8443/
and then start the configuration of the tool.
Note: Flings are experimental and should not be run on production systems.
Before deploying the OVF you should make sure that the cluster is fully configured and set up correctly.
I haven't personally tested this tool but it seems that there are some solid background and solid development team behind.
The User Manual PDF is greatly written and will assists you with the installation and setup. Charles Lee, Chen Wei, and Victor Chen in the VMware Product Enablement team wrote the original version of this paper where Catherine Xu, a technical writer in the Product Enablement team, did make sure to match the content with VMware writing style.
Other engineers have also participated in the project and you can find further details on the HCIBench tool page at VMware Labs.
Source: VMware Labs and HCIBench page
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