Effects of Data Center Vibration on Compute System Performance

From September 21, 2009 until October 2nd, 2009, Q Associates performed a series of tests and benchmarks to determine the effect of data center and system vibration on the I/O performance of an end-to-end compute environment. These tests revealed that ambient vibration inherent in a world-class, raised floor data center caused performance degradation of up to 246% for random reads and up to 88% degradation for random writes for an enterprise class storage system. This loss of performance due to environmental vibration results in a commensurate increase in energy usage for equivalent work to be performed. A prototype anti-vibration rack was tested within the same environment and shown to significantly reduce or eliminate the detrimental vibration effects resulting in significantly increased performance. A "latent performance effect" was also discovered and analyzed associated with the testing. This effect is a potential source of traditional benchmark error and would likely not be detected by normal benchmark procedures and tests. The study of this effect further collaborates the impact that vibration has on overall system performance.