I wanted a way to run automated tests on Amazon's Elastic Block Storage so I could compare performance for a single instance type over time and between Linux and Solaris. I also wanted to be able to run tests manually to check for performance degradation. I've been working on an EC2 deployment tool and I realized that I could use it to automate other kinds of workflows too. This week I finally put two and two together and created a really simple test workflow for EBS volumes.
Here's what I came up with: http://gist.github.com/123400
Right now I'm only running Bonnie64 tests and only for small and large instances of Linux. There's also no fancy reporting, just Bonnie's txt output. My plan is to add other tests and then figure out something simple for reporting (Google Charts, probably). After that I'll add Solaris and other distros / machines sizes.
Do you have any suggestions for other tests/benchmarks to use? What do you think about the approach?