Managing SSD tools with TKperf
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TKperf combines several SSD tools under one roof. You can use TKperf to investigate SSDs before deployment and even to measure performance.
Linux offers several low-level tools for investigating solid state drives (SSDs). Admins are well advised to deploy these tools immediately, because they overwrite all data, which is a problem for SSDs in production use. One example of an SSD tool is FIO [1], an I/O-benchmarking application by Jens Axboe. Upon request, FIO bypasses the Linux page cache, starts multiple jobs in parallel, and runs with different I/O depths and workloads.
The tool can even claim Linus Torvalds' blessings. "It does things right, including writing actual pseudo-random contents, which shows if the disk does some "de-duplication" (aka "optimize for benchmarks)," Torvalds posted on Google Plus in 2012. "Anything else is suspect – forget about bonnie or other traditional tools," he added.
Hdparm [2] is also an old friend that can set and read parameters on (S)ATA hard disk drives; recent versions of Hdparm even support SSDs. Hdparm is capable of obtaining information about SSDs, and it also has a secure erase feature that erases the contents of the pages.
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