RPi-Storage-Benchmarking

A small utility for benchmarking read / write throughput (both sequential and random) of storage medium(s) on a Raspberry Pi running Linux.

Overview

This Python script performs benchmarking of a storage drive's read and write performance, intedned to be run on a Raspberry Pi 4B. The benchmarking uses both fio for synthetic I/O performance tests and custom tests simulating real-world operations like writing and reading CSV files. The results are saved to a CSV file and also printed to the console.

Installation and Setup

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following installed:

• Python 3.x
• fio for benchmarking:

  sudo apt-get install fio

• pyyaml for reading the configuration file:

  pip install -r requirements.txt

Configuration

Before running the script, configure the benchmark_config.yaml file:

test_hw: "RPi_4B_USB_flash_drive"  # Hardware identifier for the test (enter your own)
test_data_sizes_mB: [10, 100, 1000]  # Data sizes to benchmark in MB
num_runs: 1  # Number of runs for each test

• test_hw: A string identifying the hardware (e.g., "RPi_4B_USB_flash_drive"). This is required to generate the results folder.
• test_data_sizes_mB: A list of data sizes in megabytes that will be used in the tests.
• num_runs: The number of times each test will be repeated to average the results.

Running the Benchmark

1. Ensure you have configured the benchmark_config.yaml file.
2. Run the benchmark script:

   python run_benchmark.py

The script will attempt to install fio if it is not installed. If the automatic installation fails, you will be prompted to manually install it using:

sudo apt install fio

The results will be saved to benchmark_results.csv in a folder named hw_benchmark_results_<your_test_hw>.

Example Output

Example results in benchmark_results.csv:

Test Type	Data Size (MB)	Run	Result (MB/s)
Sequential Write	10.00	1	50.12
Sequential Read	10.00	1	52.34
Random Write	10.00	1	1.42
Random Read	10.00	1	1.37
Custom CSV Write	10.00	1	21.87
Custom CSV Read	10.00	1	14.45