Benchmark Linux systems: Install Sysbench tool

Sysbench is a free & open source benchmarking tool that is used to benchmark Linux. It evaluates OS parameters like CPU usage, memory usage, Disk IO & MySQL performance. Especially it becomes extremely important to benchmark these parameters when running load intensive database.

In this tutorial, we will install Sysbench to benchmark Linux & will also learn how to use it with the help of some examples.

(Recommended Read: Monitoring network bandwidth with iftop command)

(Also read: Monitoring system resources using SAR (System Activity Report) )

Sysbench Installation

Sysbench is available with default repositories of RHEL & CentOS, so we can install it using the following command,

$ sudo yum install sysbench

For installing on Ubuntu, use

$ sudo apt-get install sysbench

For installation on Fedora, use

$ dnf install sysbench

Default repositories for both Ubuntu, fedora & CentOS might have older versions, If you wish to get the latest version of sysbench, use the following method.

Open terminal & execute the following command,

CentOS/RHEL

$ curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/akopytov/sysbench/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

$ sudo yum -y install sysbench

Ubuntu

$ curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/akopytov/sysbench/script.deb.sh | sudo bash

$ sudo apt -y install sysbench

Fedora

$ curl -s https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/akopytov/sysbench/script.rpm.sh | sudo bash

$ sudo dnf -y install sysbench

This will install the latest version of sysbench available (which at the time of writing this tutorial is 1.0.10 )

Sysbench Usage

CPU Benchmark

To perform the CPU benchmark on Linux, use the following command,

$ sysbench cpu --cpu-max-prime=2000 run

This will generate the following output,

sysbench 1.0.10 (using bundled LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta2)

Running the test with following options:

Number of threads: 1

Initializing random number generator from current time

Prime numbers limit: 2000

Initializing worker threads...

Threads started!

CPU speed:

events per second: 9464.46

General statistics:

total time: 10.0001s

total number of events: 94667

Latency (ms):

min: 0.10

avg: 0.10

max: 2.01

95th percentile: 0.11

sum: 9895.49

Threads fairness:

events (avg/stddev): 94667.0000/0.00

execution time (avg/stddev): 9.8955/0.00

Though it generates report with lots of statistics, main thing to check on CPU benchmarking is 'total time' under 'General Statistics'

total time: 10.0001s

Memory Benchmarking

To benchmark Linux system's memory (RAM), execute the following command,

$ sysbench memory --threads=2 run

This will produce the following output,

sysbench 1.0.10 (using bundled LuaJIT 2.1.0-beta2)

Running the test with following options:

Number of threads: 2

Initializing random number generator from current time

Running memory speed test with the following options:

block size: 1KiB

total size: 102400MiB

operation: write

scope: global

Initializing worker threads...

Threads started!

Total operations: 7074390 (707274.30 per second)

6908.58 MiB transferred (690.70 MiB/sec)

General statistics:

total time: 10.0000s

total number of events: 7074390

Latency (ms):

min: 0.00

avg: 0.00

max: 10.02

95th percentile: 0.00

sum: 6729.58

Threads fairness:

events (avg/stddev): 3537195.0000/1640.00

execution time (avg/stddev): 3.3648/0.01

Here two things that are to be considered are 'Total Operations' & amount transferred, i.e.

Total operations: 7074390 (707274.30 per second)

6908.58 MiB transferred (690.70 MiB/sec)

IO Benchmarking

While performing IO benchamark on Linux systems, we will have to first create some test file. To create test files, use the following command,

$ sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=50G prepare

Please make sure that you should select size of test file to be more than your amount of RAM, so that the IO process does not get affected duet RAM operation. Test file creation will take some time based on amount you have selected. Once test files have been created, run the following command to start the benchmarking,

$ sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=150G --file-test-mode=rndrw --max-time=300 --max-requests=0 run

this will produce the following report,

time=300 --max-requests=0 run

sysbench: /usr/lib/libmysqlclient.so.18: no version information available (required by sysbench)

sysbench 0.4.12: multi-threaded system evaluation benchmark

Running the test with following options:

Number of threads: 1

Initializing random number generator from timer.

Extra file open flags: 0

128 files, 1.1719Gb each

150Gb total file size

Block size 16Kb

Number of random requests for random IO: 0

Read/Write ratio for combined random IO test: 1.50

Periodic FSYNC enabled, calling fsync() each 100 requests.

Calling fsync() at the end of test, Enabled.

Using synchronous I/O mode

Doing random r/w test

Threads started!

Time limit exceeded, exiting...

Done.

Operations performed:

600 Read, 400

Write, 1186 Other = 2186 Total

Read 9.375Mb

Written 6.25Mb

Total transferred 15.625Mb (53.316Kb/sec)

3.33 Requests/sec executed

Test execution summary:

total time: 300.0975s

total number of events: 1000

total time taken by event execution: 158.7611

per-request statistics:

min: 0.01ms

avg: 158.76ms

max: 2596.96ms

approx. 95 percentile: 482.29ms

Threads fairness:

events (avg/stddev): 1000.0000/0.00

execution time (avg/stddev): 158.7611/0.00

Main thing to check here are,

Read 9.375Mb

Written 6.25Mb

To cleanup the test data after becnhmarking, use

$ sysbench --test=fileio --file-total-size=150G cleanup

Mysql Benchmarking

To benchmark mysql, we will first create a table with 50000 rows in database named 'test', using the following command

$ sysbench --test=oltp –oltp-table-size=50000 --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=passwd prepare

Once the operation has been completed, execute the following command to start the Mysql Bechmarking,

$ sysbench --test=oltp --oltp-table-size=500000 --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword --max-time=60 --oltp-read-only=on --max-requests=0 --num-threads=8 run

This will produce the following result,

No DB drivers specified, using mysql

Running the test with following options:

Number of threads: 8

Doing OLTP test.

Running mixed OLTP test

Doing read-only test

Using Special distribution (12 iterations, 1 pct of values are returned in 75 pct cases)

Using "BEGIN" for starting transactions

Using auto_inc on the id column

Threads started!

Time limit exceeded, exiting...

(last message repeated 7 times)

Done.

OLTP test statistics:

queries performed:

read: 2253860

write: 0

other: 321980

total: 2575840

transactions: 160990 (2683.06 per sec.)

deadlocks: 0 (0.00 per sec.)

read/write requests: 2253860 (37562.81 per sec.)

other operations: 321980 (5366.12 per sec.)

Test execution summary:

total time: 60.0024s

total number of events: 160990

total time taken by event execution: 479.3419

per-request statistics:

min: 0.81ms

avg: 2.98ms

max: 3283.40ms

approx. 95 percentile: 4.62ms

Threads fairness:

events (avg/stddev): 20123.7500/63.52

execution time (avg/stddev): 59.9177/0.00

Main parameter to check here is 'transactions per second'

transactions: 160990 (2683.06 per sec.)

To cleanup the test data, run

$ sysbench --test=oltp --mysql-db=test --mysql-user=root --mysql-password=yourrootsqlpassword cleanup

This was our tutorial on how to install Sysbench to benchmark Linux. If you have any query or questions regarding this tutorial, please share it with us using the comment box below.