How To Check Disk Performance (I/O Speed) of Your Server
In this simple article I will tell you the magic command how to find out your server’s disk performance (I/O – write and read speed). As per you know, a VPS is just like shared hosting instead it is a shared server. Shortly, vps is multiple servers virtualized in single dedicated server which means you have some neighbors to share the resource with including storage media (HDD/SSD). Disk speed / performance is really crucial and it is one important factor determining overall server speed.
Common Rules:
Nowadays there are already many VPS providers offering SSD based virtual servers (to mention: DigitalOcean and RamNode). SSD-powered VPS is actually faster than a VPS powered with traditional HDD. However there is still certain factor that makes performance may vary which is the number of VPSes within that node. In some professional or highend providers, HDD-powered VPS can be as fast as SSD-powered VPS (to mention BuyVM and Linode).
One thing is pretty decent offer, there are also several providers like RamNode that offers the middle solution between SSD and HDD called Cached-SSD. It is a combination of HDD and SSD. All hot data (most frequently accessed) will be stored in SSD while most less accessed data will be stored in HDD.
How to Test Disk Speed (I/O)
Login to your VPS via SSH and issue this magic command;
dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
How to know how fast your VPS is?
My general rule is: anything over 50 MB/s is considered acceptable. But if you bought a SSD-based VPS and it performs under 100MB/s, then that is unacceptable.
Here’s some results of some Low End VPSes I have:
1. RamNode SSD-Cached 128MB
2. TrueVPS SSD-Cached (now acquired by RamNode)
3. UGVPS (special promo plan) – HDD RAID
4. ServerMania – SSD-Cached
So, what about your server? Go ahead share the result with me 🙂
Hi, this is a great little way to test out and out speed.
Another tool which I have at my disposal is tiobench. You might want to add this to your arsenal if you want to find out information pertaining to Random & Sequential, Reads & Writes, with different numbers of threads.
Great little review on the VPS’s as well.
Cool test but what is this actually doing? I know it leaves a 1gb file called “test” in the directory you run the command but I am not sure what it is or what it is doing.
Thanks!
HDD RAID – 320 MB/s
Hi Sayiwati, I am now becoming your follower now coz I really get a lot of important topics on your blogs. Just a question: The above command “dd…”, will it work for ubuntu? Is it a test of internet speed of the HDD/SSD data fetch? I just found out my server vfsfx.com speed is 5.7mbps. Seems very slow. It could be an invalid result. Thanks.
hey, i a newbie and have a really cheap VPS. i did this test and it made a 1 GB file on my storage, how do i remove it ? i only have 2GB diskspace 🙁
DigitalOcean 1GB Ram 30GB SSD Disk New York 2 CentOS 6.5 x64:
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 14.0593 s, 76.4 MB/s
So, this is bad isn’t it…
Fred
The Reactor Hosting SSD Cloud:
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.75762 s, 186 MB/s
that’s not reflect a normal SSD speed but however it is still above low 🙂
hi, great magic command, here is my test result
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 25.8151 s, 41.6 MB/s
Linode is crushing competitors in this area:
DigitalOcean: 142 MB/s
Vultr: 450 MB/s
Linode: 970 MB/s (spiking up to 1.1GB/s)
Those are 3 roughly equivalent systems. 2GB RAM, 40GB SSD, 2 cores (different CPUs though). Those are average speeds over 20 tests.
Nice. Vultr is considered new while Linode is not playing at low end segment 🙂
Anyway to test I/O performance on shared cpanel environment?
My Ramnode SSD-Cached openVZ VPS has 468 MB/s.
While my Virpus Xen Pure-SSD is only 208 MB/s.
I’m wondering why an SSD Cached is faster than Pure SSD.
Any idea?
many factors, one of them is accounts’ density (how many accounts assigned in the same node) 🙂
and yes RamNode has great I/O speed
I’ve tested my vps from wiredtree.
I’ve got 127MB/sec.
Based on above post, looks like my vps i/o not that quick.
Test with my KH VPS with these spec:
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.22324 s, 878 MB/s
All of our VPS is set up on SSD/ and or SSD Cached. Below results is one of our VPS we use for shared clients
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 0.98586 s, 1.1 GB/s
Is it really accurate?
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.44708 s, 742 MB/s
root@mothership [/]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 0.685115 s, 1.6 GB/s
root@mothership [/]#
My Free HapHost VPS 🙂
[root@haphost ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.75468 s, 187 MB/s
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 0.828881 s, 1.3 GB/s
Tested on E3 1270v2 node with open vz VPS at 5 GB RAM 100 GB SSD
which provider is that?
Useful. Can You Share iFi Host Unmanaged VPS Hosting Speed
Here is link https://www.ifihost.com/unmanagedvps/
No I don’t have account with them
Hi Sawiyati, I checked this in my 3 Provider’s VPS following are the results:
Haphost.com 100% Free VPS with 128MB Ram:
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 5.22653 s, 205 MB/s
ResellerClub.com 1GB Ram with 70gb HDD:
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 16.8498 s, 63.7 MB/s
BudgetVM.com 2 core, 2GB Ram with 150gb SSD:
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 8.63984 s, 124 MB/s
Haphost is to fast? :-O :-p
A new test:
2GB Ram, SSD
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 2.02547 s, 530 MB/s
I have few VPS at server4you
Old (non SSD) return me:
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 11.9894 s, 89.6 MB/s
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 11.7855 s, 91.1 MB/s
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 10.5978 s, 101 MB/s
Few days ago I made decision to buy one SSD based VPS for testing, results are here:
1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 1,53301 s, 700 MB/s
1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 2,06115 s, 521 MB/s
1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 1,71937 s, 624 MB/s
1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 1,6524 s, 650 MB/s
1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 1,48896 s, 721 MB/s
That’s a fast SSD
Hi
(1.1 GB) copied, 14.1479 s, 75.9 MB/s
my vps 6 GB ram and it’s with ssd from CONTABO
the highest speed i got 97MB/S
bad result right?
in deed
I think i broke the slow record:
1073741824 bytes (1,1 GB) copied, 84,2972 s, 12,7 MB/s
god i hate my provider, I’m so glad that i already migrated most of our systems.
what provider is that?
How Can I check Whether My Hosting Package is SSD or HDD enabled??
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 2.31523 s, 464 MB/s
VULTR with 768 Ram and 1 Core
I bought a TMDHosting.com VPS with 2GB RAM and 2 cores thinking it as SSD VPS. But after running this command I got this result
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 100.492 s, 10.7 MB/s
TMDHosting must be the winner of slowest VPS award!!!
I asked for refund but no reply from support weather they will refund my money or not.
TMDHosting = Total Money Dumping Hosting
Nice article, here is a test from one the Los Angeles location with specs of 1GB ram, 20GB SSD.
http://www.iozoom.com
[root@server ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 1.46977 s, 731 MB/s
[root@server ~]#
how to remove that file of size 1.1gb please anyone answer this. i am out of space
DatabaseByDesignLLC.com 60GB SSD, 2v CPU, 4GB RAM:
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 6.04436 s, 178 MB/s
If the Disk I/O is below 20 MB/s, what does it means? 1) Is the server very very slow?
2) The VPS provider put too many users in the server?
3) What problem users will experience with this low disk I/O?
4) What is the VPS provider must do to increase the disk I/O?
.
[root@db4 ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 2.05897 s, 521 MB/s
1 core / 30GB NVMe-cached / 1G RAM from https://malaysia-vps.com