Understanding how applications perform I/O is important not only because of the volume of data being written and read, but because the performance of some applications is dependent on how I/O is conducted. In this article we profile I/O at the block layer to help you make the best storage decisions.

HPC Storage is arguably one of the most pressing issues in HPC. Selecting various HPC Storage solutions is a problem that requires some research, study, and planning to be effective – particularly cost-effective. Getting this process started usually means understanding how your applications perform I/O. This article presents some techniques for examining I/O patterns in HPC applications.