Ok, because of a bunch of projects I'm working on I've access to dedicated Servers on a 3 hosting providers.

As an experiment and for educational purposes I decided to see if I could benchmark how good the IO is with each.

Bit of research lead me to Bonnie++

So I installed it on the server and ran this simple command

/usr/sbin/bonnie -d /tmp/foo 

The 3 machines in different hosting providers are all dedicated machines, one is a VPS, other two are on some cloud platform e.g. VMWare / Xen using some kind of clustered SAN for storage

This might be a naive thing to do but here are the results I found.

    HOST A

    Version 1.03c       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
                        -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
    xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1G 45081  88 56244  14 19167   4 20965  40 67110   6  67.2   0
                        ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
                        -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
                  files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                     16 15264  28 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++ +++++ +++
    xxxxxxxx,1G,45081,88,56244,14,19167,4,20965,40,67110,6,67.2,0,16,15264,28,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,+++++,+++



    HOST B

    Version 1.03d       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
                        -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
    xxxxxxxxxxxx     4G 43070  91 64510  15 19092   0 29276  47 39169   0 448.2   0
                        ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
                        -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
                  files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                     16 24799  52 +++++ +++ +++++ +++ 25443  54 +++++ +++ +++++ +++
    xxxxxxx,4G,43070,91,64510,15,19092,0,29276,47,39169,0,448.2,0,16,24799,52,+++++,+++,+++++,+++,25443,54,+++++,+++,+++++,+++



    HOST C

    Version 1.03c       ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
                        -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
    xxxxxxxxxxxxx 1536M 15598  22 85698  13 258969  20 16194  22 723655  21 +++++ +++
                        ------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
                        -Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
                  files  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP  /sec %CP
                     16 14142  22 +++++ +++ 18621  22 13544  22 +++++ +++ 17363  21
    xxxxxxxx,1536M,15598,22,85698,13,258969,20,16194,22,723655,21,+++++,+++,16,14142,22,+++++,+++,18621,22,13544,22,+++++,+++,17363,21

Ok, so first off what is the best way to read the figures and are there any issues with really comparing these numbers?

Is this in any way a true representation of IO Speed?

If not is there any way for me to test that?

Note: these 3 machines are using either Ubuntu or Debian (I presume that doesn't really matter)