SPECstorage™ Solution 2020_eda_blended Result
Copyright © 2016-2025 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
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SPECstorage™ Solution 2020_eda_blended ResultCopyright © 2016-2025 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation |
| Microsoft and NetApp Inc. | SPECstorage Solution 2020_eda_blended = 10560 Job_Sets |
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| Azure NetApp Files large volume scale | Overall Response Time = 0.64 msec |
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| Azure NetApp Files large volume scale | |
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| Tested by | Microsoft and NetApp Inc. | Hardware Available | May 2024 | Software Available | May 2024 | Date Tested | August 2025 | License Number | 33 | Licensee Locations | San Jose, CA USA |
Azure NetApp Files is an Azure native, first-party, enterprise-class, high-performance file storage service. It provides Volumes as a service, which you can create within a NetApp account and a capacity pool, and share to clients using SMB and NFS. You can also select service and performance levels and manage data protection. You can create and manage high-performance, highly available, and scalable file shares by using the same protocols and tools that you're familiar with and rely on on-premises.
| Item No | Qty | Type | Vendor | Model/Name | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | Storage Service | Microsoft | Azure NetApp Files large volume | Azure NetApp Files large volumes can support from 50 TiB to 2 PiB in size, with a maximum throughput of up to 12800 MiB/s. Volumes can be resized up or down on demand, and throughput can be adjusted automatically (based on volume size) or manually depending on the capacity pool QoS type. |
| 2 | 60 | Azure Virtual Machine | Microsoft | Standard_D32_v5 | Red Hat Enterprise Linux running on Azure D32s_v5 Virtual Machines (32 vCPU, 128 GB Memory, 16 Gbps Networking). The Dsv5-series virtual machines offer a combination of vCPUs and memory to meet the requirements associated with most enterprise workloads |
| Item No | Component | Type | Name and Version | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RHEL 9.5 | Operating System | RHEL 9.5 (Kernel 5.14.0-503.38.1.el9_5.x86_64) | Operating System (OS) for the workload clients |
| Client Network Settings | Parameter Name | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Accelerated Networking | Enabled | Accelerated Networking enables single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) on supported virtual machine (VM) types | Storage Network Settings | Parameter Name | Value | Description |
| Network features | Standard | Standard Network Features allows Azure VNet features such as network security groups, user-defined routes and others. |
None
| Clients | Parameter Name | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| rsize,wsize | 262144 | NFS mount options for data block size |
| protocol | tcp | NFS mount options for protocol |
| nfsvers | 3 | NFS mount options for NFS version |
| nconnect | 8 | NFS mount options for multiple TCP connections |
| actimeo | 600 | NFS mount option to modify the timeouts for attribute caching |
| nocto | present (boolean) | NFS mount option to turn off close-to-open consistency |
| noatime | present (boolean) | NFS mount option to turn off access time updates |
| nofile | 102400 | Maximum number of open files per user |
| nproc | 10240 | Maximum number of processes per user |
| sunrpc.tcp_slot_table_entries | 128 | Sets the number of (TCP) RPC entries to pre-allocate for in-flight RPC requests |
| net.core.wmem_max | 16777216 | Maximum size of the socket send buffer |
| net.core.rmem_max | 16777216 | Maximum size of the socket receive buffer |
| net.core.wmem_default | 1048576 | Default setting in bytes of the socket send buffer |
| net.core.rmem_default | 1048576 | Default setting in bytes of the socket receive buffer |
| net.ipv4.tcp_rmem | 1048576 8388608 33554432 | Minimum, default and maximum size of the TCP receive buffer |
| net.ipv4.tcp_wmem | 1048576 8388608 33554432 | Minimum, default and maximum size of the TCP send buffer |
| net.core.optmem_max | 4194304 | Maximum ancillary buffer size allowed per socket |
| net.core.somaxconn | 65535 | Maximum tcp backlog an application can request |
| net.ipv4.tcp_mem | 4096 89600 8388608 | Maximum memory in 4096-byte pages across all TCP applications. Contains minimum, pressure and maximum. |
| net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling | 1 | Enable TCP window scaling |
| net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps | 0 | Turn off timestamps to reduce performance spikes related to timestamp generation |
| net.ipv4.tcp_no_metrics_save | 1 | Prevent TCP from caching connection metrics on closing connections |
| net.ipv4.route.flush | 1 | Flush the routing cache |
| net.ipv4.tcp_low_latency | 1 | Allows TCP to make decisions to prefer lower latency instead of maximizing network throughput |
| net.ipv4.ip_local_port_range | 1024 65000 | Defines the local port range that is used by TCP and UDP traffic to choose the local port. |
| net.ipv4.tcp_slow_start_after_idle | 0 | Congestion window will not be timed out after an idle period |
| net.core.netdev_max_backlog | 300000 | Sets maximum number of packets, queued on the input side, when the interface receives packets faster than kernel can process |
| net.ipv4.tcp_sack | 0 | Disable TCP selective acknowledgements |
| net.ipv4.tcp_dsack | 0 | Disable duplicate SACKs |
| net.ipv4.tcp_fack | 0 | Disable forward acknowledgement |
| vm.dirty_expire_centisecs | 30000 | Defines when dirty data is old enough to be eligible for writeout by the kernel flusher threads. Unit is 100ths of a second. |
| vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs | 30000 | Defines a time interval between periodic wake-ups of the kernel threads responsible for writing dirty data to hard-disk. Unit is 100ths of a second. |
Tuned the necessary client parameters as shown above, for communication between clients and storage over Azure Virtual Networking, to optimize data transfer and minimize overhead.
| Item No | Description | Data Protection | Stable Storage | Qty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Azure NetApp Files large volume, Flexible Service Level, 50 TiB, 12800 MiB/s | Azure NetApp Files Flexible, Standard, Premium and Ultra service levels are built on a fault-tolerant bare-metal fleet powered by ONTAP, delivering enterprise-grade resilience, and uses RAID-DP (Double Parity RAID) to safeguard data against disk failures. This mechanism distributes parity across multiple disks, enabling seamless data recovery even if two disks fail simultaneously. RAID-DP has a long-standing presence in the enterprise storage industry and is recognized for its proven reliability and fault tolerance. | Stable Storage | 6 |
| Number of Filesystems | 6 | Total Capacity | 300 TiB | Filesystem Type | Azure NetApp Files large volume |
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Large volumes were created via the public Azure API using the azure cli tool.
Creation commands are available here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/netappfiles/volume?view=azure-cli-latest#az-netappfiles-volume-create
Creating the Azure NetApp Files Account: az netappfiles account create
--account-name [account-name] --resource-group [resource-group] --location
[location]
Creating the Azure NetApp Files Capacity Pool:
az netappfiles pool create --account-name [account-name] --resource-group
[resource-group] --location [location] --pool-name [pool-name] --service-level
Flexible --size 54975581388800 --CustomThroughputMibps 12800
Creating the Azure NetApp Files Volume: az netappfiles volume create
--resource-group [resource-group] --account-name [account-name] --location
[location] --pool-name [pool-name] --name [volume-name] --usage-threshold 51200
--file-path [mount-point] --protocol-types NFSv3 --vnet [vnet-id] --zones 1
--throughput-mibps 12800
n/a
| Item No | Transport Type | Number of Ports Used | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16 Gbps Virtual NIC | 60 | Each Linux Virtual Machine has a single 16 Gbps Network Adapter with Accelerated Networking enabled. |
Azure Virtual machines allocated bandwidth limits egress (outbound) traffic from the virtual machines. The virtual machines ingress bandwidth rates may exceed 16 Gbps depending on other resources available to the virtual machine (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-network/virtual-machine-network-throughput)
| Item No | Switch Name | Switch Type | Total Port Count | Used Port Count | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Azure Virtual Network - Qatar Central AZ3 | Virtual Network | 11 | 11 | Each Azure virtual network had 1 connection for the Azure NetApp Files storage endpoint and 10 (1 per) RHEL client. Azure virtual networks allow up to 65,536 Network interface cards and Private IP addresses per virtual network. This Azure VNet was Peered to the VNet in Canada Central AZ1. |
| 2 | Azure Virtual Network - South Africa North AZ2 | Virtual Network | 11 | 11 | This Azure VNet was Peered to the VNet in Canada Central AZ1. |
| 3 | Azure Virtual Network - South Africa North AZ3 | Virtual Network | 11 | 11 | This Azure VNet was Peered to the VNet in Canada Central AZ1. |
| 4 | Azure Virtual Network - Germany West Central AZ1 | Virtual Network | 11 | 11 | This Azure VNet was Peered to the VNet in Canada Central AZ1. |
| 5 | Azure Virtual Network - Canada Central AZ1 | Virtual Network | 11 | 11 | This Azure VNet was Peered to all other VNets to allow Prime client communication between itself and the workload clients |
| 6 | Azure Virtual Network - Canada Central AZ2 | Virtual Network | 11 | 11 | This Azure VNet was Peered to the VNet in Canada Central AZ1. |
| Item No | Qty | Type | Location | Description | Processing Function |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1920 | vCPU | Azure Cloud | Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8370C CPU @ 2.80GHz (32 cores allocated to each VM) | Client Workload Generator |
n/a
| Description | Size in GiB | Number of Instances | Nonvolatile | Total GiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Client Workload Generator | 128 | 60 | V | 7680 | Grand Total Memory Gibibytes | 7680 |
None
Azure NetApp Files utilizes non-volatile battery-backed memory of two independent nodes as write caching prior to write acknowledgement. This protects the filesystem from any single-point-of-failure until the data is de-staged to disks. In the event of an abrupt failure, pending data in the non-volatile battery-backed memory is replayed to disk upon restoration.
Clients accessed one storage endpoint for the Azure NetApp Files large volume
within the same availability zone/virtual network.
Unlike a
general-purpose operating system, Azure NetApp Files does not provide
mechanisms for customers to run third-party code (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/benchmark/azure/baselines/azure-netapp-files-security-baseline?toc=/azure/azure-netapp-files/TOC.json#security-profile).
Azure Resource Manager allows only an allow-listed set of operations to be
executed via the Azure APIs (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-netapp-files/control-plane-security).
Underlying Azure infrastructure was patched for Spectre/Meltdown on or prior
to January 2018. (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/securing-azure-customers-from-cpu-vulnerability/
and https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/mitigate-se).
None
60 clients were used to generate the workload: 1 client acted as both Prime
client and a workload client to itself and the 59 other workload clients.
Each workload client used one 16 Gbps virtual network adapter, through a single
vnet connected to one Azure NetApp Files endpoint. Each client mounted one ANF
large volume as an NFSv3 filesystem.
The Prime client communicated with
all workload clients outside of the virtual network it was connected to using
virtual
network peering. Client to storage traffic was contained within each
virtual network created per region/availability zone.
There is 1 mount per client. Example mount commands from one server are shown
below. /etc/fstab entry:
10.254.121.4:/canada-az1-vol /mnt/eda nfs
hard,proto=tcp,vers=3,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,nconnect=8,nocto,noatime,actimeo=600
0 0
mount | grep eda
10.254.121.4:/canada-az1-vol on /mnt/eda type nfs
(rw,noatime,vers=3,rsize=262144,wsize=262144,namlen=255,acregmin=600,acregmax=600,acdirmin=600,acdirmax=600,hard,nocto,proto=tcp,nconnect=8,timeo=600,retrans=2,sec=sys,mountaddr=10.254.121.4,mountvers=3,mountport=635,mountproto=tcp,local_lock=none,addr=10.254.121.4)
None
Generated on Mon Oct 6 12:41:33 2025 by SpecReport
Copyright © 2016-2025 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation
