Martin DENIZET

DigitalOcean offers excellent VPS service starting just $5 a month, and for this price, you already get 20GB of SSD storage.

Here is a benchmark to compare marketing to technology.

dd benchmark

Benchmarking methodology provited by archlinux.org

Writing speed:

#dd if=/dev/zero of=tempfile bs=1M count=1024 conv=fdatasync,notrunc
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 3.48775 s, 308 MB/s

Unbuffered reading speed:

#echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
# dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 0.929918 s, 1.2 GB/s

Buffered reading speed:

# dd if=tempfile of=/dev/null bs=1M count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 0.877832 s, 1.2 GB/s

bonnie++ benchmark

Benchmarking methodology provited by www.jamescoyle.net

Note will not be installed in most distributions and need to b added with:

apt-get install bonnie++

# bonnie++ -d /tmp -r 4096 -u auser
Using uid:1000, gid:1000.
Writing a byte at a time...done
Writing intelligently...done
Rewriting...done
Reading a byte at a time...done
Reading intelligently...done
start 'em...done...done...done...done...done...
Create files in sequential order...done.
Stat files in sequential order...done.
Delete files in sequential order...done.
Create files in random order...done.
Stat files in random order...done.
Delete files in random order...done.
Version  1.96       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
Concurrency   1     -Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine        Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP  /sec %CP
martin-denizet.c 8G   566  98 268709  29 151830  19  1695  79 750403  52 14200 226
Latency             21981us     222ms     217ms   21076us   84063us   73661us
Version  1.96       ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
martin-denizet.com  -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
              files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                 16 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
Latency               130ms     741us    4194us    4800us     349us     727us
1.96,1.96,martin-denizet.com,1,1390728351,8G,,566,98,268709,29,151830,19,1695,79,750403,52,14200,226,16,,,,,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,21981us,222ms,217ms,21076us,84063us,73661us,130ms,741us,4194us,4800us,349us,727us

What does it mean?

• We can constantly write to about ~262MB/s
• We can constantly read to about ~732MB/s
• We can seek about 14200 blocks per second

Conclusion

Is that good? Well, that’s what we can except from a good SSD on a 6Gbps bus.

The writing performance compares to a Crucial M4 256GB or a Samsun 840 Evo 120GB or a Intel 525 180GB (See Tom’s Hardware Charts). But let’s not forget that DigitalOcean provides RAIDs protection with also the benefit of giving outstanding read performance.

I don’t have an array of HDD to give a comparative test, however DigitalOcean delivers and my databases should run more than fine even with low memory thanks to high IOPS! Thank you DigitalOcean!