this is obsolete doc -- see http://doc.nethence.com/ instead

Unix benchmarking 

Global tools 

LMbench: http://www.bitmover.com/lmbench/ 

CPU & swap 

This manual method may be helpful, 

reboot w/ kernel boot option mem=256m

vmstat 1 (si=swap in, so=swap out)

make -j 20 bzImage

Refs. 

https://www.linode.com/docs/uptime/monitoring/use-vmstat-to-monitor-system-performance 

Network 

Real-time network usage: 

- nload 

- iptraf, iptrag-ng 

- tcptrack 

- nethogs 

- iftop : http://ex-parrot.com/~pdw/iftop/ 

- iperf : http://dast.nlanr.net/Projects/Iperf/ 

- ntop : http://www.ntop.org/download.html 

Refs. 

http://www.binarytides.com/linux-commands-monitor-network/ 

Harddrive 

On a Linux system only, here on an IDE (hda) drive, check for DMA, 

hdparm -d /dev/hda

#hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

and see hard drive performance, 

hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

Note. -T for cached reads 

Note. -t for buffered disk reads 

There's also iostat, 

iostat sda  # standard

iostat -x sda  # extended

iostat -p sda  # partitions

iostat -d 1 sda  # refresh every 1 second

Note iostat comes with the "sysstat" package. 

Ref. http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.godard/ 

bonnie : http://www.textuality.com/bonnie/index.html 

bonnie++ : http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ 

For example, 

bonnie -s 1024

Apache 

Apache's ab : http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/programs/ab.html 

MySQL 

Download and install sysbench (http://sysbench.sourceforge.net/). Usage example, 

sysbench \

--test=oltp \

--num-threads=512 \

--mysql-user=root \

--max-time=240 \

--max-requests=0

PostgreSQL 

Pgbench is included in PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/). 

Usage reference: http://www.westnet.com/~gsmith/content/postgresql/pgbench.htm 

Miscellaneous 

- NetBSD pkgsrc's benchmark selection : http://pkgsrc.se/benchmarks 

- KSH benchmark tests : http://www.metacard.com/kshbench.html 

Windows 

http://www.openworkbench.org/ 

Procfeatures : http://www.microsoft.com/france/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/Procfeatures.mspx 

References 

http://www.sun.com/x64/docs/MySQL-sysbench-benchmark.pdf 

http://www.metacard.com/kshbench.html