hIOmon SSD Performance Monitor - Understanding desktop usage patterns.

[overthere]

... I have tried to follow the user guide to get the Raw Device Extended Feature Option to work, but somehow I must be missing a step...

The hIOmon "Raw Device Extended Feature Option" enables you to collect the "Physical Device Extended Metrics", which basically reflect disk I/O operation activity at the "physical volume" or "physical device" levels within the Windows OS I/O stack for those disks that are partitioned/formatted (e.g., have a filesystem upon them).

Moreover, these metrics automatically correlate file I/O operations with their associated physical volume and/or physical device I/O operations. That is, they essentially reflect those physical volume/device I/O operations that were performed so as to satisfy file I/O operations which were also monitored by the hIOmon I/O Monitor at the associated file level (i.e., they basically reflect “physical volume/device” I/O operations that were required to complete file I/O operations for those files that were also being monitored by the hIOmon I/O Monitor).

Values present within the various hIOmon "PhyDev" metric types indicate that the hIOmon software was successfully configured to include the collection of the "Physical Device Extended Metrics".

The various hIOmon "automated configuration scripts" (such as the hIOmon "Device and File I/O Performance Analysis Add-On" configuration script) provide the option to enable the collection of the "Physical Device Extended Metrics".

So looking at your hIOmon export files and hIOmon Presentation Client screenshots, it appears that you have been successfully collecting these metrics (presumably based upon your use of the various hIOmon "Add-On" configuration scripts).

[Ao1]

[EDIT - I re-ran this to capture all three levels at the same time.]

Here I capture Black Ops SP at the Device level, Volume level and File Level .

To explain some of the figures:

Device Level Reads
• Data transferred = ~406MB (Incurred over 30 minutes of game play).
• Total I/O's = 16,216
• Max IOPs = 22.7.
• FastIOPS 97.4 % (less than one millisecond).
• Min xfer size = 1,024. Average xfer size = 26,317. Max xfer size = 262,144.
• Min response time = 0.0416ms. Avg response time = 0.2179ms. Max response time = 10.4449ms
• Maximum data transfer rate for a single I/O operation. = 268.59MB/s. (If done in less than one millisecond MB/s is technically "inflated").

File/ Logical Disk Level Reads
• Data transferred = 2.35GB
• Total I/O's = 193,016
• Max IOPs = 152.9
• FastIOPS 95.3 % (less than one millisecond).
• Min xfer size = 0. Average xfer size = 13,662. Max xfer size = 262,144.
• Min response time = 0.00416ms. Avg response time = 0.0584ms. Max response time = 10.5207ms
• Maximum data transfer rate for a single I/O operation. = 2,801.833MB/s.

[Ao1]

Here I capture Black Ops MP at the Device Level, Volume Level and File Level . All at the same time

The same map was reloaded around 5 times ~20 minutes. AV enabled.

I only started monitoring AFTER the fist map had loaded. Read xfers related to the first map load at the device level are therefore excluded, but available at the Logical Device Level for subsequent I/O's. (Assuming they were held in cache when the monitoring started).

Any read xfers (at the device level) are subsequently down to dropped cache or reads generated during game play. (Also any other background reads from the OS/ AV etc).

I hope I got that right. It seems to stack up with the highlights below.

Device Level Reads
• Data transferred = ~180MB
• Total I/O's = 1,645
• Max IOPs = 2.7
• FastIOPS 76.8 % (less than one millisecond).
• Min xfer size = 512. Average xfer size = 116,522. Max xfer size = 9,433,088. (~9MB)
• Min response time = 0.0451ms. Avg response time = 0.9008ms. Max response time = 50.154ms
• Maximum data transfer rate for a single I/O operation. = 268.315MB/s.

Logical Disk Reads
• Data transferred = ~3.7GB
• Total I/O's = 839,171
• Max IOPs = 1,502.8
• FastIOPS 97.4 % (less than one millisecond).
• Min xfer size = 2. Average xfer size = 4,973. Max xfer size = 9,957,376.
• Min response time = 0.0034ms. Avg response time = 0.0109ms. Max response time = 50.3104ms
• Maximum data transfer rate for a single I/O operation. = 2,898.44MB/s.