Feature Request - add "xdd" benchmark program to base install

[survive]

Hi guys,

I was on the IRC channel the other night talking to another user about how my "dd" results writing to disk had been steadily decreasing with each FreeNAS release. The conversation moved to "dd"'s general unsuitability as a benchmark and how how isn't really meant to be used that way....standard stuff. True as that may be the "dd" test has pretty much become the de facto measure of performance that's thrown around in the forums & in the IRC channel. It's simple, quick & generates an easy to understand result.

A little bit later a gentleman suggested I take a look at the "xdd" benchmark that's in the FreeBSD ports. It's a tool originally written by SGI that builds on "dd"'s blast-the-bits-to-the-disk ability and adds all sorts of options & reporting to allow you to dictate how you access the disk & what gets reported.

Think "dd" re-written by an HPC\supercomputer maker as a benchmark...that's what it is.

Anyway, I would like to propose that "xdd" be included in FreeNAS 8.2 and that a page with some "standard" commands that would allow users to get baseline read & write performance numbers be added to the users guide.

-Will

[gcooper]

Support was added into FreeNAS 8.0.4 at r10159.