
Iometer is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and
clustered systems. Iometer is pronounced “eye-OM-i-ter,” to rhyme with
“thermometer.” Iometer does for a computer’s I/O subsystem what a dynamometer
does for an engine: it measures performance under a controlled load. Iometer was
formerly known as “Galileo.”
Iometer is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to
stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the
performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured
to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used
to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or
multiple (networked) systems.
Iometer can be used for measurement and characterization of:
- Performance of disk and network controllers.
- Bandwidth and latency capabilities of buses.
- Network throughput to attached drives.
- Shared bus performance.
- System-level hard drive performance.
- System-level network performance.