AIS Loader (aisloader)

AIS Loader (aisloader) is a tool to measure storage performance. It is a load generator that we constantly use to benchmark and stress-test AIStore or any S3-compatible backend.

In fact, aisloader can list, write, and read S3() buckets directly, which makes it quite useful, convenient, and easy to use benchmark to compare storage performance **with aistore in front of S3 and without.

(**) aisloader can be further easily extended to work directly with any Cloud storage provider including, but not limited to, aistore-supported GCP, OCI, and Azure.

In addition, aisloader generates synthetic workloads that mimic training and inference workloads - the capability that allows to run benchmarks in isolation (which is often preferable) avoiding compute-side bottlenecks (if any) and associated complexity.

There’s a large set of command-line switches that allow to realize almost any conceivable workload, with basic permutations always including:

  • number of workers
  • read and write sizes
  • read and write ratios

Detailed protocol-level tracing statistics are also available - see HTTP tracing section below for brief introduction.

October 2025 update: aisloader retains its StatsD integration for operational and benchmarking use cases. While AIStore itself now uses Prometheus exclusively, aisloader (for now) continues to emit its runtime metrics via StatsD — allowing DevOps to collect and visualize performance data from large aisloader fleets.

To integrate aisloader with Prometheus-based observability stacks, run the official Prometheus StatsD Exporter (which would translate aisloader’s StatsD metrics into Prometheus format).

Table of Contents

Setup

You can install aisloader using the following Bash script:

  • https://github.com/NVIDIA/aistore/blob/main/scripts/install_from_binaries.sh
./scripts/install_from_binaries.sh --help

Alternatively, you can also build the tool directly from the source:

## uncomment if needed:
## git clone https://github.com/NVIDIA/aistore.git
## cd aistore
##
$ make aisloader

For usage, run: aisloader, aisloader usage, or aisloader --help.

For usage examples and extended commentary, see also:

  • https://github.com/NVIDIA/aistore/blob/main/bench/tools/aisloader/test/ci-test.sh

Command Line Options

This section presents two alternative, intentionally redundant views for usability: a concise alphabetical quick reference for fast lookups, and a grouped-by-category presentation with explanations and examples for deeper understanding.

For the most recently updated command-line options and examples, please run aisloader or aisloader usage.

Quick Reference (Alphabetical)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-arch.format string Archive format (.tar, .tgz, .tar.gz, .zip, .tar.lz4) .tar
-arch.minsize string Minimum size of files inside shards, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-arch.maxsize string Maximum size of files inside shards, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-arch.num-files int Number of archived files per shard (PUT only; 0 = auto-computed from file sizes) 0
-arch.pct int Percentage of PUTs that create shards (0-100); does NOT affect GET operations 0
-arch.prefix string Optional prefix inside archive (e.g., trunk- or a/b/c/trunk-) ""
-bprops json JSON string formatted as per the SetBucketProps API and containing bucket properties to apply ""
-bucket string Bucket name or bucket URI. If empty, aisloader generates a new random bucket name ""
-cached bool List in-cluster objects - only those objects from a remote bucket that are present (“cached”) false
-cksum-type string Checksum type to use for PUT object requests xxhash
-cleanup bool When true, remove bucket upon benchmark termination (must be specified for AIStore buckets) n/a (required)
-cont-on-err bool GetBatch: ignore missing files and/or objects - include them under __404__/ prefix and keep going false
-dry-run bool Show the entire set of parameters that aisloader will use when actually running false
-duration duration Benchmark duration (0 - run forever or until Ctrl-C). If not specified and totalputsize > 0, runs until totalputsize reached 1m
-epochs int Number of “epochs” to run whereby each epoch entails full pass through the entire listed bucket 0
-etl string Built-in ETL, one of: tar2tf, md5, or echo. Each object that aisloader GETs undergoes the selected transformation ""
-etl-spec string Custom ETL specification (pathname). Must be compatible with Kubernetes Pod specification ""
-evict-batchsize int Batch size to list and evict the next batch of remote objects 1000
-filelist string Local or locally accessible text file containing object names (for subsequent reading) ""
-get-batchsize int Use GetBatch API (ML endpoint) instead of GetObject 0
-getloaderid bool When true, print stored/computed unique loaderID and exit false
-ip string AIS proxy/gateway IP address or hostname localhost
-json bool When true, print the output in JSON false
-latest bool When true, check in-cluster metadata and possibly GET the latest object version from the associated remote bucket false
-list-dirs bool List virtual subdirectories (remote buckets only) false
-loaderid string ID to identify a loader among multiple concurrent instances 0
-loaderidhashlen int Size (in bits) of the generated aisloader identifier. Cannot be used together with loadernum 0
-loadernum int Total number of aisloaders running concurrently and generating combined load. If defined, must be greater than the loaderid and cannot be used together with loaderidhashlen 0
-maxputs int Maximum number of objects to PUT 0
-maxsize string Maximal object size, may contain multiplicative suffix 1GiB
-minsize string Minimal object size, may contain multiplicative suffix 1MiB
-multipart-chunks int Number of chunks for multipart upload (0 = disabled, >0 = use multipart with specified chunks) 0
-num-subdirs int Spread generated objects over this many virtual subdirectories (< 100k) 0
-numworkers int Number of goroutine workers operating on AIS in parallel 10
-pctmultipart int Percentage of PUT operations that use multipart upload (0-100, only applies when multipart-chunks > 0) 0
-pctput int Percentage of PUTs in the aisloader-generated workload (see also: -arch.pct) 0
-pctupdate int Percentage of GET requests that are followed by a PUT “update” (i.e., creation of a new version of the object) 0
-perm-shuffle-max int Max names for shuffle-based name-getter (above this uses O(1) memory affine) 100000
-port string AIS proxy/gateway port 8080
-provider string ais for AIS bucket, aws, azure, gcp, oci for Amazon, Azure, Google, and Oracle clouds respectively ais
-putshards int Deprecated - use -num-subdirs instead 0
-quiet bool When starting to run, do not print command line arguments, default settings, and usage examples false
-randomname bool When true, generate object names of 32 random characters. This option is ignored when loadernum is defined true
-randomproxy bool When true, select random gateway (“proxy”) to execute each I/O request false
-readertype string Type of reader: sg (default), file, rand, tar sg
-readlen string Read range length, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-readoff string Read range offset, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-s3endpoint string S3 endpoint to read/write S3 bucket directly (with no AIStore) ""
-s3profile string Other than default S3 config profile referencing alternative credentials ""
-s3-use-path-style bool Use older path-style addressing (e.g., https://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET/KEY). Should only be used with -s3endpoint false
-seed int Random seed to achieve deterministic reproducible results (0 = use current time in nanoseconds) 0
-skiplist bool When true, skip listing objects in a bucket before running 100% PUT workload false
-stats-output string Filename to log statistics (empty string = standard output) ""
-statsdip string Deprecated - StatsD IP address or hostname localhost
-statsdport int Deprecated - StatsD UDP port 8125
-statsdprobe bool Deprecated - Test-probe StatsD server prior to benchmarks false
-statsinterval int Interval in seconds to print performance counters (0 = disabled) 10
-stoppable bool When true, allow termination via Ctrl-C false
-subdir string For GET: prefix that may or may not be an actual virtual directory. For PUT: virtual destination directory for all generated objects. See CLI --prefix ""
-timeout duration Client HTTP timeout (0 = infinity) 10m
-tmpdir string Local directory to store temporary files /tmp/ais
-tokenfile string Authentication token (FQN) ""
-totalputsize string Stop PUT workload once cumulative PUT size reaches or exceeds this value, can contain multiplicative suffix (0 = no limit) 0
-trace-http bool Trace HTTP latencies (see HTTP tracing) false
-uniquegets bool When true, GET objects randomly and equally (i.e., avoid getting some objects more frequently than others) true
-usage bool Show command-line options, usage, and examples false
-verifyhash bool Checksum-validate GET: recompute object checksums and validate against the one received with GET metadata false

Command Line Options Grouped by Category

Cluster Connection and API Configuration (clusterParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-ip string AIS proxy/gateway IP address or hostname localhost
-port string AIS proxy/gateway port 8080
-randomproxy bool When true, select random gateway (“proxy”) to execute each I/O request false
-timeout duration Client HTTP timeout (0 = infinity) 10m
-tokenfile string Authentication token (FQN) ""
-s3endpoint string S3 endpoint to read/write S3 bucket directly (with no AIStore) ""
-s3profile string Other than default S3 config profile referencing alternative credentials ""
-s3-use-path-style bool Use older path-style addressing (e.g., https://s3.amazonaws.com/BUCKET/KEY). Should only be used with -s3endpoint false

Target Bucket and Properties (bucketParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-bucket string Bucket name or bucket URI. If empty, aisloader generates a new random bucket name ""
-provider string ais for AIS bucket, aws, azure, gcp, oci for Amazon, Azure, Google, and Oracle clouds respectively ais
-bprops json JSON string formatted as per the SetBucketProps API and containing bucket properties to apply ""

Timing, Intensity, and Name-Getter Configuration (workloadParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-duration duration Benchmark duration (0 - run forever or until Ctrl-C). If not specified and totalputsize > 0, runs until totalputsize reached 1m
-numworkers int Number of goroutine workers operating on AIS in parallel 10
-pctput int Percentage of PUTs in the aisloader-generated workload (see also: -arch.pct) 0
-pctupdate int Percentage of GET requests that are followed by a PUT “update” (i.e., creation of a new version of the object) 0
-epochs int Number of “epochs” to run whereby each epoch entails full pass through the entire listed bucket 0
-perm-shuffle-max int Max names for shuffle-based name-getter (above this uses O(1) memory affine) 100000
-seed int Random seed to achieve deterministic reproducible results (0 = use current time in nanoseconds) 0
-maxputs int Maximum number of objects to PUT 0
-totalputsize string Stop PUT workload once cumulative PUT size reaches or exceeds this value, can contain multiplicative suffix (0 = no limit) 0
-skiplist bool When true, skip listing objects in a bucket before running 100% PUT workload false
-uniquegets bool When true, GET objects randomly and equally (i.e., avoid getting some objects more frequently than others) true

Object Size Constraints and Integrity (sizeCksumParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-minsize string Minimal object size, may contain multiplicative suffix 1MiB
-maxsize string Maximal object size, may contain multiplicative suffix 1GiB
-cksum-type string Checksum type to use for PUT object requests xxhash
-verifyhash bool Checksum-validate GET: recompute object checksums and validate against the one received with GET metadata false
-readertype string Type of reader: sg (default), file, rand, tar sg
-tmpdir string Local directory to store temporary files /tmp/ais

Archive/Shard Configuration (archParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-arch.format string Archive format (.tar, .tgz, .tar.gz, .zip, .tar.lz4) .tar
-arch.prefix string Optional prefix inside archive (e.g., trunk- or a/b/c/trunk-) ""
-arch.num-files int Number of archived files per shard (PUT only; 0 = auto-computed from file sizes) 0
-arch.minsize string Minimum size of files inside shards, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-arch.maxsize string Maximum size of files inside shards, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-arch.pct int Percentage of PUTs that create shards (0-100); does NOT affect GET operations 0

Object Naming Strategy (namingParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-num-subdirs int Spread generated objects over this many virtual subdirectories (< 100k) 0
-filelist string Local or locally accessible text file containing object names (for subsequent reading) ""
-list-dirs bool List virtual subdirectories (remote buckets only) false
-randomname bool When true, generate object names of 32 random characters. This option is ignored when loadernum is defined true
-subdir string For GET: prefix that may or may not be an actual virtual directory. For PUT: virtual destination directory for all generated objects. See CLI --prefix ""
-putshards int Deprecated - use -num-subdirs instead 0

Read Operation Configuration (readParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-readoff string Read range offset, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-readlen string Read range length, can contain multiplicative suffix ""
-get-batchsize int Use GetBatch API (ML endpoint) instead of GetObject 0
-latest bool When true, check in-cluster metadata and possibly GET the latest object version from the associated remote bucket false
-cached bool List in-cluster objects - only those objects from a remote bucket that are present (“cached”) false
-evict-batchsize int Batch size to list and evict the next batch of remote objects 1000
-cont-on-err bool GetBatch: ignore missing files and/or objects - include them under __404__/ prefix and keep going false

Multipart Upload Settings (multipartParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-multipart-chunks int Number of chunks for multipart upload (0 = disabled, >0 = use multipart with specified chunks) 0
-pctmultipart int Percentage of PUT operations that use multipart upload (0-100, only applies when multipart-chunks > 0) 0

ETL Configuration (etlParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-etl string Built-in ETL, one of: tar2tf, md5, or echo. Each object that aisloader GETs undergoes the selected transformation ""
-etl-spec string Custom ETL specification (pathname). Must be compatible with Kubernetes Pod specification ""

Fleet Coordination (loaderParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-loaderid string ID to identify a loader among multiple concurrent instances 0
-loadernum int Total number of aisloaders running concurrently and generating combined load. If defined, must be greater than the loaderid and cannot be used together with loaderidhashlen 0
-loaderidhashlen int Size (in bits) of the generated aisloader identifier. Cannot be used together with loadernum 0
-getloaderid bool When true, print stored/computed unique loaderID and exit false

Statistics and Monitoring (statsParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-stats-output string Filename to log statistics (empty string = standard output) ""
-statsinterval int Interval in seconds to print performance counters (0 = disabled) 10
-json bool When true, print the output in JSON false
-statsdip string Deprecated - StatsD IP address or hostname localhost
-statsdport int Deprecated - StatsD UDP port 8125
-statsdprobe bool Deprecated - Test-probe StatsD server prior to benchmarks false

Cleanup, Dry-Run, HTTP Tracing, Termination Control (miscParams)

Command-line option Type Description Default
-cleanup bool When true, remove bucket upon benchmark termination (must be specified for AIStore buckets) n/a (required)
-dry-run bool Show the entire set of parameters that aisloader will use when actually running false
-trace-http bool Trace HTTP latencies (see HTTP tracing) false
-stoppable bool When true, allow termination via Ctrl-C false
-quiet bool When starting to run, do not print command line arguments, default settings, and usage examples false
-usage bool Show command-line options, usage, and examples false

Assorted Command Line

Duration

The loads can run for a given period of time (option -duration <duration>) or until the specified amount of data is generated (option -totalputsize=<total size in KBs>).

If both options are provided the test finishes on the whatever-comes-first basis.

Example 100% write into the bucket “abc” for 2 hours:

$ aisloader -bucket=abc -provider=ais -duration 2h -totalputsize=4000000 -pctput=100

The above will run for two hours or until it writes around 4GB data into the bucket, whatever comes first.

Write vs Read

You can choose a percentage of writing (versus reading) by setting the option -pctput=<put percentage>.

Example with a mixed PUT=30% and GET=70% load:

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -duration 5m -pctput=30 -cleanup=true

Example 100% PUT:

$ aisloader -bucket=abc -duration 5m -pctput=100 -cleanup=true

The duration in both examples above is set to 5 minutes.

To test 100% read (-pctput=0), make sure to fill the bucket beforehand.

Read range

The loader can read the entire object (default) or a range of object bytes.

To set the offset and length to read, use option -readoff=<read offset (in bytes)> and readlen=<length to read (in bytes)>.

For convenience, both options support size suffixes: k - for KiB, m - for MiB, and g - for GiB.

Example that reads a 32MiB segment at 1KB offset from each object stored in the bucket “abc”:

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -duration 5m -cleanup=false -readoff=1024 -readlen=32m

The test (above) will run for 5 minutes and will not “cleanup” after itself (next section).

Cleanup

NOTE: -cleanup is a mandatory option defining whether to destroy bucket upon completion of the benchmark.

The option must be specified in the command line.

Example:

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -pctput=100 -totalputsize=16348 -cleanup=false
$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -duration 1h -pctput=0 -cleanup=true

The first line in this example above fills the bucket “abc” with 16MiB of random data. The second - uses existing data to test read performance for 1 hour, and then removes all data.

If you just need to clean up old data prior to running a test, run the loader with 0 (zero) total put size and zero duration:

$ aisloader -bucket=<bucket to cleanup> -duration 0s -totalputsize=0

Object size

For the PUT workload the loader generates randomly-filled objects. But what about object sizing?

By default, object sizes are randomly selected as well in the range between 1MiB and 1GiB. To set preferred (or fixed) object size(s), use the options -minsize=<minimal object size in KiB> and -maxsize=<maximum object size in KiB>

Setting bucket properties

Before starting a test, it is possible to set mirror or EC properties on a bucket (for background, please see storage services).

For background on local mirroring and erasure coding (EC), please see storage services.

To achieve that, use the option -bprops. For example:

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -pctput=0 -cleanup=false -duration 10s -bprops='{"mirror": {"copies": 2, "enabled": false}, "ec": {"enabled": false, "data_slices": 2, "parity_slices": 2}}'

The above example shows the values that are globally default. You can omit the defaults and specify only those values that you’d want to change. For instance, to enable erasure coding on the bucket “abc”:

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -duration 1h -bprops='{"ec": {"enabled": true}}' -cleanup=false

This example sets the number of data and parity slices to 2 which, in turn, requires the cluster to have at least 5 target nodes: 2 for data slices, 2 for parity slices and one for the original object.

Once erasure coding is enabled, its properties data_slices and parity_slices cannot be changed on the fly.

Note that (n data_slices, m parity_slices) erasure coding requires at least (n + m + 1) target nodes in a cluster.

Even though erasure coding and/or mirroring can be enabled/disabled and otherwise reconfigured at any point in time, specifically for the purposes of running benchmarks it is generally recommended to do it once prior to writing any data to the bucket in question.

The following sequence populates a bucket configured for both local mirroring and erasure coding, and then reads from it for 1h:

# Fill bucket
$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -cleanup=false -pctput=100 -duration 100m -bprops='{"mirror": {"enabled": true}, "ec": {"enabled": true}}'

# Read
$ aisloader -bucket=abc -cleanup=false -pctput=0 -duration 1h

Bytes Multiplicative Suffix

Parameters in aisLoader that represent the number of bytes can be specified with a multiplicative suffix. For example: 8M would specify 8 MiB. The following multiplicative suffixes are supported: ‘t’ or ‘T’ - TiB ‘g’ or ‘G’ - GiB, ‘m’ or ‘M’ - MiB, ‘k’ or ‘K’ - KiB. Note that this is entirely optional, and therefore an input such as 300 will be interpreted as 300 Bytes.

Environment variables

Environment Variable Type Description
AIS_ENDPOINT string Cluster’s endpoint: http or https address of any aistore gateway in this cluster. Overrides ip and port flags.

To state the same slightly differently, cluster endpoint can be defined in two ways:

  • as (plain) http://ip:port address, whereby ‘--ip’ and ‘--port’ are command-line options.
  • via AIS_ENDPOINT environment universally supported across all AIS clients, e.g.:
$ export AIS_ENDPOINT=https://10.07.56.68:51080

In addition, environment can be used to specify client-side TLS (aka, HTTPS) configuration:

var name description
AIS_CRT X.509 certificate
AIS_CRT_KEY X.509 certificate’s private key
AIS_CLIENT_CA Certificate authority that authorized (signed) the certificate
AIS_SKIP_VERIFY_CRT when true, skip X.509 cert verification (usually enabled to circumvent limitations of self-signed certs)

See also:

Archive Workload

AIStore supports packing many small files into shards (TAR, ZIP, TGZ, LZ4-TAR) to improve performance and reduce metadata overhead.

AISLoader can benchmark both archive creation (PUT) and reading individual files from existing shards (GET).

Archive Parameters

Parameter Description
-arch.pct Percentage of PUTs that create shards (0–100). Does not affect GET operations. 100 = all PUTs create shards; 30 = 30% shards, 70% plain objects.
-arch.format Archive format: .tar (default), .tgz, .tar.gz, .zip, .tar.lz4.
-arch.num-files Files per shard for PUT. 0 = auto-computed from arch.minsize / arch.maxsize.
-arch.minsize Minimum size of files inside shards (supports multiplicative suffixes).
-arch.maxsize Maximum size of files inside shards (supports multiplicative suffixes).

When the bucket contains shards, aisloader automatically:

  1. Lists objects with archive expansion enabled
  2. Detects archived files (e.g., shard-987.tar/file-042.bin)
  3. Reads from them using the ?archpath= API parameter

The displayed statistics will show whether objects are plain or archived, e.g.:

Found 108,959 plain objects and 1,089,590 archived files (91% archived)

Usage Examples

Create 100% shards (each containing 10 files)

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -pctput=100 -arch.pct=100 \
            -arch.num-files=10 -arch.minsize=1K -arch.maxsize=100K \
            -duration=5m -cleanup=false

All PUTs create shards; each shard contains 10 files between 1KB and 100KB.

Mixed workload: 30% shards, 70% plain objects

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -pctput=100 -arch.pct=30 \
            -arch.num-files=10 -arch.minsize=1K -arch.maxsize=100K \
            -duration=5m -cleanup=false

30% of PUT operations create shards; the rest create plain objects.

Read from existing shards

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -pctput=0 -duration=1h -cleanup=false

When the target bucket contains shards, aisloader automatically:

  1. Lists objects with archive expansion enabled
  2. Identifies archived files (e.g., photos.tar/00042.jpg)
  3. Issues GET requests using ?archpath= to retrieve individual files inside shards

Example startup message:

Found 108,959 plain objects and 1,089,590 archived files (91% archived)

Create shards using a specific archive format

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -pctput=100 -arch.pct=100 -arch.format=.tgz -arch.num-files=20 -duration=5m -cleanup=false

Performance Considerations

  • Small-file workloads benefit greatly from sharding: fewer large objects → fewer metadata lookups → higher throughput.
  • Archived GETs add CPU overhead, especially for compressed formats (.tgz, .tar.lz4).

  • Throughput vs. operation rate tradeoff:

    • Large plain objects → high MB/s
    • Many tiny files inside shards → lower MB/s but similar (or higher) operations/sec

Example typical comparison:

  • Reading 16KB plain objects: ~250 MiB/s
  • Reading 1KB archived files: ~13 MiB/s, but with comparable GET operations/sec

Limitations

  • Multipart uploads of shards are not yet supported (requires streaming chunk writer).
  • Direct S3 access (-s3endpoint) does not support archive operations (sharding requires AIStore).

For more information about AIStore’s archive/shard support, see

Get-Batch Support

With version 2.1, aisloader can now benchmark Get-Batch operations using the --get-batchsize flag (range: 1-1000). The tool consumes TAR streams (see note below), validates archived file counts, and tracks Get-Batch-specific statistics. The --continue-on-err flag enables testing of soft-error handling behavior.

Supported serialization formats include: .tar (default), .tar.gz, .tar.lz4, and .zip.

Random Access Across Very Large Collections

The tool uses the [name-getter] abstraction (see https://github.com/NVIDIA/aistore/blob/main/bench/tools/aisloader/namegetter/ng.go) to enable efficient random reads across very large collections: objects and archived files.

The --epochs N flag enables full-dataset read passes, with different algorithms selected automatically based on dataset size:

PermAffinePrime: For datasets larger than 100k (by default) objects, an affine transformation with prime modulus provides memory-efficient pseudo-random access without storing full permutations. The algorithm fills batch requests completely and may span epoch boundaries.

PermShuffle: For datasets up to (default) 100k objects, Fisher-Yates shuffle with uint32 indices (50% memory reduction compared to previous implementation).

Selection Logic:

Workload Dataset Size Selected Algorithm
Mixed read/write or non-epoched workloads any Random / RandomUnique
Read-only <= 100k objects (default) PermShuffle
Read-only > 100k objects (--/--) PermAffinePrime

Command-line override to set the size threshold (instead of default 100k): --perm-shuffle-max flag.

Examples

For the most recently updated command-line options and examples, please run aisloader or aisloader usage.

1. Create a 10-seconds load of 50% PUT and 50% GET requests:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=my_ais_bucket -duration=10s -pctput=50 -provider=ais
Found 0 existing objects
Run configuration:
{
    "proxy": "http://172.50.0.2:8080",
    "provider": "ais",
    "bucket": "my_ais_bucket",
    "duration": "10s",
    "put upper bound": 0,
    "put %": 50,
    "minimal object size in Bytes": 1024,
    "maximum object size in Bytes": 1048576,
    "worker count": 1,
    "stats interval": "10s",
    "backed by": "sg",
    "cleanup": true
}

Actual run duration: 10.313689487s

Time      OP    Count                 	Total Bytes           	Latency(min, avg, max)              	Throughput            	Error
01:52:52  Put   26                    	11.19GB               	296.39ms   5.70s      14.91s        	639.73MB              	0
01:52:52  Get   16                    	3.86GB                	58.89ms    220.20ms   616.72ms      	220.56MB              	0
01:52:52  CFG   0                     	0B                    	0.00ms     0.00ms     0.00ms        	0B                    	0
01:52:52 Clean up ...
01:52:54 Clean up done
```

2. Time-based 100% PUT into ais bucket. Upon exit the bucket is destroyed:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=nvais -duration 10s -cleanup=true -numworkers=3 -minsize=1K -maxsize=1K -pctput=100 -provider=ais
```

3. Timed (for 1h) 100% GET from a Cloud bucket, no cleanup:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=aws://nvaws -duration 1h -numworkers=30 -pctput=0 -cleanup=false
```

4. Mixed 30%/70% PUT and GET of variable-size objects to/from a Cloud bucket. PUT will generate random object names and is limited by the 10GB total size. Cleanup enabled - upon completion all generated objects and the bucket itself will be deleted:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=s3://nvaws -duration 0s -cleanup=true -numworkers=3 -minsize=1024 -maxsize=1MB -pctput=30 -totalputsize=10G
```

5. PUT 1GB total into an ais bucket with cleanup disabled, object size = 1MB, duration unlimited:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=nvais -cleanup=false -totalputsize=1G -duration=0 -minsize=1MB -maxsize=1MB -numworkers=8 -pctput=100 -provider=ais
```

6. 100% GET from an ais bucket:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=nvais -duration 5s -numworkers=3 -pctput=0 -provider=ais -cleanup=false
```

7. PUT 2000 objects named as aisloader/hex({0..2000}{loaderid}):

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=nvais -duration 10s -numworkers=3 -loaderid=11 -loadernum=20 -maxputs=2000 -objNamePrefix="aisloader" -cleanup=false
```

8. Use random object names and loaderID to report statistics:

```console
$ aisloader -loaderid=10
```

9. PUT objects with random name generation being based on the specified loaderID and the total number of concurrent aisloaders:

```console
$ aisloader -loaderid=10 -loadernum=20
```

10. Same as above except that loaderID is computed by the aisloader as hash(loaderstring) & 0xff:

```console
$ aisloader -loaderid=loaderstring -loaderidhashlen=8
```

11. Print loaderID and exit (all 3 examples below) with the resulting loaderID shown on the right:

```console
$ aisloader -getloaderid (0x0)
$ aisloader -loaderid=10 -getloaderid (0xa)
$ aisloader -loaderid=loaderstring -loaderidhashlen=8 -getloaderid (0xdb)
```

12. Destroy existing ais bucket. If the bucket is Cloud-based, delete all objects:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=nvais -duration 0s -totalputsize=0 -cleanup=true
```

13. Generate load on a cluster listening on custom IP address and port:

```console
$ aisloader -ip="example.com" -port=8080
```

14. Generate load on a cluster listening on custom IP address and port from environment variable:

```console
$ AIS_ENDPOINT="examples.com:8080" aisloader
```

15. Use HTTPS when connecting to a cluster:

```console
$ aisloader -ip="https://localhost" -port=8080
```

16. PUT TAR files with random files inside into a cluster:

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=ais://my_bucket -duration=10s -pctput=100 -arch.pct=100 -arch.num-files=10 -arch.minsize=1K -arch.maxsize=10K -cleanup=false
```

17. Generate load on tar2tf ETL. New ETL is started and then stopped at the end. TAR files are PUT to the cluster. Only available when cluster is deployed on Kubernetes.

```console
$ aisloader -bucket=my_ais_bucket -duration=10s -pctput=100 -provider=ais -readertype=tar -etl=tar2tf -cleanup=false
```

18. Timed 100% GET directly from S3 bucket (notice ‘-s3endpoint’ command line): console $ aisloader -bucket=s3://xyz -cleanup=false -numworkers=8 -pctput=0 -duration=10m -s3endpoint=https://s3.amazonaws.com

19. PUT approx. 8000 files into s3 bucket directly, skip printing usage and defaults. Similar to the previous example, aisloader goes directly to a given S3 endpoint (‘-s3endpoint’), and aistore is not being used: console $ aisloader -bucket=s3://xyz -cleanup=false -minsize=16B -maxsize=16B -numworkers=8 -pctput=100 -totalputsize=128k -s3endpoint=https://s3.amazonaws.com -quiet

20. Generate a list of object names (once), and then run aisloader without executing list-objects:

```console
$ ais ls ais://nnn --props name -H > /tmp/a.txt
$ aisloader -bucket=ais://nnn -duration 1h -numworkers=30 -pctput=0 -filelist /tmp/a.txt -cleanup=false
```

21. GetBatch example: read random batches each consisting of 64 archived files

    $ ais ls ais://nnn --summary
    NAME             PRESENT         OBJECTS         SIZE (apparent, objects, remote)        USAGE(%)
    ais://nnn        yes             108959 0        1.67GiB 1.66GiB 0B                      0%

    $ aisloader -bucket=ais://nnn -pctput=0 -duration=90m -numworkers=4 -cleanup=false -get-batchsize=64 --quiet -epochs 7 -cont-on-err
    Found 1,089,590 archived files

    Runtime configuration:
    {
       "proxy": "http://ais-endpoint:51080",
       "bucket": "ais://nnn",
       "duration": "1h30m0s",
       "# workers": 4,
       "stats interval": "10s",
       "GET(batch): batch size": 64,
       "archive (shards)": {
          "% workload": 100,
          "format": ".tar",
          "minimum file size": 1024,
          "maximum file size": 1048576
       },
       "name-getter": "unique epoch-based",
       "cleanup": false
    }

    Time      OP    Count                   Size (Total)            Latency (min, avg, max)                 Throughput (Avg)        Errors (Total)
    14:16:45  GBT   6,602 (6,602)           412.6MiB (412.6MiB)     4.399ms    6.030ms    22.278ms          41.26MiB/s (41.26MiB/s) -
    14:16:55  GBT   6,397 (12,999)          399.8MiB (812.4MiB)     4.566ms    6.225ms    17.136ms          39.98MiB/s (40.62MiB/s) -
    14:17:05  GBT   6,201 (19,200)          387.6MiB (1.2GiB)       4.609ms    6.424ms    22.505ms          38.75MiB/s (40.00MiB/s) -
    14:17:15  GBT   6,127 (25,327)          382.9MiB (1.5GiB)       4.821ms    6.500ms    21.599ms          38.30MiB/s (39.57MiB/s) -
    14:17:25  GBT   6,153 (31,480)          384.6MiB (1.9GiB)       4.765ms    6.473ms    23.135ms          38.46MiB/s (39.35MiB/s) -
    ...

Collecting stats

Collecting is easy - aisloader supports at-runtime monitoring via with Graphite using StatsD. When starting up, aisloader will try to connect to provided StatsD server (see: statsdip and statsdport options). Once the connection is established the statistics from aisloader are send in the following format:

<metric_type>.aisloader.<hostname>-<loaderid>.<metric>
  • metric_type - can be: gauge, timer, counter
  • hostname - is the hostname of the machine on which the loader is ran
  • loaderid - see: -loaderid option
  • metric - can be: latency.*, get.*, put.*

Grafana

Grafana helps visualize the collected statistics. It is convenient to use and provides numerous tools to measure and calculate different metrics.

We provide simple script which allows you to set up the Graphite and Grafana servers which run inside separate dockers. To add new dashboards and panels, please follow: grafana tutorial.

When selecting a series in panel view, it should be in the format: stats.aisloader.<loader>.*. Remember that metrics will not be visible (and you will not be able to select them) until you start the loader.

HTTP tracing

Following is a brief illustrated sequence to enable detailed tracing, capture statistics, and toggle tracing on/off at runtime.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

The amount of generated (and extremely detailed) metrics can put a strain on your StatsD server. That’s exactly the reason for runtime switch to toggle HTTP tracing on/off. The example below shows how to do it (in particular, see kill -HUP).

1. Run aisloader for 90s (32 workers, 100% write, sizes between 1KB and 1MB) with detailed tracing enabled:

$ aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -duration 90s -numworkers=32 -minsize=1K -maxsize=1M -pctput=50 --cleanup=false --trace-http=true

2. Have netcat listening on the default StatsD port 8125:

$ nc 8125 -l -u -k

# The result will look as follows - notice "*latency*" metrics (in milliseconds):

...
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.posthttp:0.0005412320409368235|ms|@0.000049
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.proxyheader:0.06676835268647904|ms|@0.000049
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.targetresponse:0.7371088368431411|ms|@0.000049aisproxy.DLEp8080.put.count:587262|caistarget.vuIt8081.kalive.ms:1|ms
aistarget.vuIt8081.disk.sda.avg.rsize:58982|g
aistarget.vuIt8081.disk.sda.avg.wsize:506227|g
aistarget.vuIt8081.put.count:587893|c
aistarget.vuIt8081.put.redir.ms:2|ms
aistarget.vuIt8081.disk.sda.read.mbps:5.32|g
aistarget.vuIt8081.disk.sda.util:3|gaisloader.u18044-0.get.count:0|caisloader.u18044-0.put.count:19339|caisloader.u18044-0.put.pending:7|g|@0.000052aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency:4.068928072806246|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.minlatency:0|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.maxlatency:60|ms|@0.000052aisloader.u18044-0.put.throughput:1980758|g|@0.000052aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.posthttp:0.0005170898185014737|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.proxyheader:0.06742851233259217|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.proxyrequest:0.1034696726821449|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.targetheader:0.0699622524432494|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.targetrequest:0.09168002482031129|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.targetresponse:0.806660116862299|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.proxy:0.6616681317544858|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.targetconn:1.0948859816950205|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.proxyresponse:0.425616629608563|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.proxyconn:1.2669734732923108|ms|@0.000052
aisloader.u18044-0.put.latency.target:1.0063602047675682|ms|@0.000052aisproxy.DLEp8080.put.count:605044|caistarget.vuIt8081.put.redir.ms:2|ms
...

3. Finally, toggle detailed tracing on and off by sending aisoader SIGHUP:

$ pgrep -a aisloader
3800 aisloader -bucket=ais://abc -duration 90s -numworkers=32 -minsize=1K -maxsize=1M -pctput=100 --cleanup=false --trace-http=true

# kill -1 3800
# or, same: kill -HUP 3800

The result:

Time      OP    Count                   Size (Total)            Latency (min, avg, max)                 Throughput (Avg)        Errors (Total)
10:11:27  PUT   20,136 (20,136 8 0)     19.7MiB (19.7MiB)       755.308µs  3.929ms    42.493ms         1.97MiB/s (1.97MiB/s)   -
...
Detailed latency info is disabled
...

# As stated, `SIGHUP` is a binary toggle - next time used it'll enable detailed trace with `aisloader printing:

Detailed latency info is enabled

Note that other than --trace-http, all command-line options in this section are used for purely illustrative purposes.

AISLoader Composer

For benchmarking production-level clusters, a single AISLoader instance may not be able to fully saturate the load the cluster can handle. In this case, multiple aisloader instances can be coordinated via the AISLoader Composer. See the README for instructions on setting up.

References

For AIS observability (including CLI, Prometheus, and Kubernetes integration), please see:

For StatsD compliant backends, see:

Finally, for another supported - and alternative to StatsD - monitoring via Prometheus integration, see: