Microsoft and HP Deliver Storage Performance
One of the benchmarks important to gauge performance of file servers and NAS devices is SPECsfs97_R1 set up by the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC). This is a non-profit benchmarking organization and this specific benchmark has been created to establish network file system (NFS) performance. Because of the nature of the organization and the fact that vendors have to submit the results for auditing, this benchmark has become de-facto standard for comparing performance between different devices. As a matter of fact, there are end-users that rely on this benchmark to gauge overall performance of a file serving device even if this benchmark clearly only addresses NFS performance and not CIFS. There is no equivalent organization as far as CIFS performance is concerned. A popular benchmark for CIFS is called NetBench but there are no independent organizations that post CIFS benchmarks for end users to compare. Hopefully, this will be rectify as CIFS performance is often more critical as many end users traffic is comprised primarily of CIFS based files.
Full story @ Windows Server Division WebLog