FILE SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

Executive Overview

The Solaris™ 10 06/06 Operating System (OS) introduces a major new data management technology — the Solaris ZFS file system. Replacing the traditionally separate file system and volume manager functionality found in most operating environments, Solaris ZFS provides immense capacity and performance coupled with a proven data integrity model and simplified administrative interface.

The Veritas Storage Foundation — consisting of the Veritas Volume Manager and Veritas File System — provides a set of integrated tools for storage management. This white paper explores the performance characteristics and differences of Solaris ZFS and the Veritas File System through a series of tests using the new Filebench benchmarking framework which reproduces the I/O patterns of applications, as well as the popular IOzone benchmark which tests specific I/O patterns.

Figure 1-1 illustrates the differences between Solaris ZFS and the Veritas File System in a number of tests. In many cases, Solaris ZFS performs better at the initial release. In some cases Solaris ZFS does not perform as well — but in almost all cases Solaris ZFS performs differently. These results, as well as supporting testing data described in this document, strive to give organizations sufficient detail on the differences between Solaris ZFS and the Veritas File System so that intelligent decisions can be made about when each technology could or should be used. Indeed, the results presented here can help enterprises reach performance goals, if the goals can be quantified.