IOMeter reveals interesting results, splitting between the offerings from IBM and Seagate. While the 36Z15 manages to take top honors in our oft-quoted
Workstation Index (a normalized average of
Light, Medium, and Heavy loads), the X15 holds its own in the
File Server Index and maintains a slim but significant lead in the
Database Index. Since File Server differences are insignificant, concentrate on Workstation and Database results.
Constructed from reads and writes of 8k blocks, the patterns are actually quite similar... the Database pattern is wholly random while the Workstation pattern introduces a bit of sequential access as well as emphasizing reads a bit more. IBM triumphs over Seagate in Workstation performance by a margin of 6% while Seagate returns the favor in the Database Index, edging out the IBM by about 3%. It's an interesting contrast in firmware optimizations.
Conclusion...
