AJA System Test vs dperf

AJA System Test evaluates drive performance so users can estimate whether a drive system can record and play back different resolutions and codecs. It measures read and write speed and overall throughput, including on network mapped drives. In its graphical interface, users select a test type, drive, video size, frame rate, file size, and connected video device. Results can appear in MB/sec or FPS with graphs. The report generator produces text results that users can copy into spreadsheets or other software, and result exports include text report, PDF, and SPX formats. Custom test profiles are supported. Workload areas also include PCIe bandwidth, AJA-device DMA, and combined disk and device I/O; PCIe bandwidth testing is part of the full version included in AJA Desktop Software downloads. The standalone Apple Store and Windows versions are listed as AJA System Test Lite v16.0 at free. The software runs on macOS and Windows, and AJA offers a download path that does not require signing up.

dperf is a Linux command-line utility for benchmarking drives to identify storage bottlenecks and performance outliers. It runs tests on multiple drives simultaneously and ranks them by throughput. Measurements use O_DIRECT to bypass the operating system page cache. Users can configure block size, file size, and concurrent I/O operations per drive. Results report read and write throughput, with verbose mode adding per-drive statistics alongside aggregate totals. The tool supports sequential tests, but not random I/O tests, IOPS measurement, or latency measurement. Its README describes deployment as Kubernetes Jobs, CronJobs, or DaemonSets for storage validation, as well as automated checks in CI/CD pipelines. Temporary space requirements are based on file size multiplied by I/O operations per drive for each drive. dperf requires Linux, a kernel and filesystem supporting direct I/O, and write access to target directories. Prebuilt binaries are listed for amd64, arm64, ppc64le, and s390x. It is free under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.