Bonnie++ vs fio
Bonnie++
github.comfio
fio.readthedocs.ioSide by side
| Figure | Bonnie++ | fio |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Disk Benchmark Software | 8.4 (#3) | 8.1 (#6) |
| Author | The manual credits Russell Coker as the writer of the program and manual page, with parts based on Tim Bray's work. | The documentation names Jens Axboe as fio's author and says he wrote it to enable flexible testing of the Linux I/O subsystem and schedulers. |
| Intended users | The documentation describes tests that simulate I/O patterns in database applications and file activity similar to Squid or INN. | The author describes fio as a tool for simulating specific I/O workloads without repeatedly writing tailored test programs. |
| License | The project documentation states that Bonnie++ is licensed under GPL version 2.0. | fio is free software published under version 2 of the GNU GPL. |
| Purpose | Bonnie++ benchmarks hard drives and file systems by measuring work per second and CPU usage. | fio simulates user-defined I/O workloads to test performance or reproduce bugs. |
Plans
In their own words
Bonnie++
Bonnie++ is a free, command-line benchmark suite for measuring filesystem and disk I/O performance on Linux. It exercises sequential input and output, rewrites, random seeks, and file operations including creation, stat, and deletion of many small files. The project describes these workloads as useful for investigating I/O bottlenecks in I/O-intensive applications, including database work, and for simulating file activity associated with Squid or INN. Bonnie++ can test more than 2 GB of storage on a 32-bit machine. Its -D option enables direct I/O for bulk tests, while -b calls fsync after each write and syncs the directory after file creation or deletion. Semaphore support can synchronize multiple instances. Results can be emitted as plain text or CSV, with companion tools to convert CSV into HTML or formatted plain text. The project is licensed under GPL version 2.0, and the repository includes source code and Debian, RPM, and Sun-related packaging files. Its documentation warns against running the benchmark on live production machines because it can affect services and consume disk space or inodes.
fio
fio is a free command-line tool for simulating user-defined I/O workloads for performance testing and reproducing bugs. Users can describe a workload in a job file or set parameters on the command line, including I/O patterns, block and I/O sizes, engines, queue depth, target files or devices, and threads or processes. Results can be reported in normal, terse, JSON or JSON+ formats. fio can run as a backend server and receive jobs from clients on other hosts; its HTTP engine supports HTTP and S3 access. It supports random and sequential tests, IOPS and latency measurement, and platforms including Linux, macOS, Windows and several BSD variants. On Windows, the documented minimums are Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and Cygwin is required for building. The --readonly option is intended to prevent writes and trims; fio also aborts destructive jobs on devices that appear mounted unless allow_mounted_write is set. Root access is only needed when the selected files or devices require it. fio is free software under version 2 of the GNU GPL.