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Description
Jeremy smith shows how he created some custom PowerShell functions to test disk speeds. He details how he could take a manual process and automate it. Prior to Jeremy's automation, this process was done through an old school cmd line utility and then manually parsing out the relevant data. Jeremy could automate the process from start to end.
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A
My
name
is
Jeremy
Smith
and
I'd
like
to
show
you
guys
a
little
bit
of
script
handed
around
using
disk
speed
for
some
storage
performance
testing.
So
this
is
the
sort
of
the
end
results
grip
at
all:
I'll
walk
it
back
and
kinda
walk
you
through
my
process
of
how
I
got
here.
We
started
with
kneading
I
was
working
with
some
of
the
the
storage
guys
and
hardware
guys.
I
am
I'm
more
of
a
developer,
so
I
was
just
kind
of
helping
out
them.
A
They
basically
wanted
to
run
a
whole
bunch
of
iterations
of
disks
P.
This
is
just
a
sample
on
an
AWS
instance,
collect
some
metrics
and
and
run
that
you
know
20
times,
maybe
let
it
rest
for
five
minutes
or
so
and
then
collecting
these
metrics.
So
it
started
where
we
were
running
this
in
command.
Prompt
picking
out
some
of
the
pieces
of
information
copying
that
into
an
excel
sheet.
It
was
all
very
manual
and
it
was
screaming
than
you
no
need
for
automation
and
PowerShell
code
so
started
here.
A
Basically,
I
just
took
the
command
that
we
were
running
and
and
threw
that
into
PowerShell
didn't
really
get
any
win
from
that,
but
started
just
iterate
over
the
process.
Looking
at
the
parameters
for
disk
speed
saw
that
there
is
an
XML
output
Ament.
So
now,
if
I
run
this,
do
you
think
we
can?
We
can
do
something
with
the
results,
because
PowerShell
is
pretty
good
at
parsing
XML,
it's
still
a
lot
to
chew
through,
but
at
least
it's
it's
like
machine
readable.
A
So
next
I
did
a
leather
just
wrapped
some
of
that
stuff
in
a
function
that
actually
just
calls
Dix
disk
speed
with
the
arguments.
Whatever.
Whatever
parameters
cuz,
we
were
fiddling
with
with
modifying
a
bunch
of
these
things.
I
will
skip
over
what
this
was
doing.
If
it's
calling
the
like
start
process
and
then
redirecting
the
output
stream
I
actually
forget
why
we
needed
to
do
that,
but
it
was
not
not
working
just
calling
just
the
directly
in
certain
circumstances,
but
I
didn't
comment
it
so
now
I've
forgotten
why
that
was
needed.
A
So
the
next
thing
me
right.
Let
me
go
ahead
and
run
this
and
grab
those
results
into
the
XML
back
down
you,
okay.
The
next
thing
was
I
needed
to
parse
that
XML
so
wrote
a
little
function
using
a
lot
of
select
XML,
basically
just
to
pull
out
the
parameters
that
we
were
manually
copying
into
the
spreadsheet,
just
with
a
lot
of
XPath
queries.
So
it's
it's
a
little
verbose
but
relatively
straightforward.
Once
you
get
the
pattern
down
just
grab
all
of
these
things
you
can
see.
A
This
is
just
a
simple
script
function,
it's
not
not,
but
into
a
module
or
anything
fancy
like
that.
We'll
just
grab
all
these
values
and
then
throw
that
into
a
PS
custom
object.
So,
but
just
how
the
script
evolved
all
this
stuff
now
I
get
this
result,
object,
I'm,
also
capturing
the
start
time.
So
every
time
I
invoke
the
function.
I
can
capture
the
time
of
day
that
it
ran.
That's
pretty
handy.
A
We
can
see
that
while
it's
running
the
CPU
spikes
up
and
then
got
actual
object,
representation
of
the
data
I
need.
So
this
is
a
you
know,
clear
step
forward.
The
last
piece
of
the
puzzle
is
that
we
also
wanted
to
capture
the
average
disk
D
length,
which
is
not
reported
by
disk
speed.
So
when
we
were
first
doing
it
very
manually,
you
would
kind
of
monitor.
When
does
it
start?
When
did
it
end?
Okay
kind
of
eyeball
the
value
and
just
put
something
into
the
spreadsheet?
Oh,
but
PowerShell
can
do
better.
A
Two
cooked
values
over
the
time
that
it
was
running.
But
again
still
we
have
two
two
pieces
of
this
work
going
on
every
time.
We
want
to
invoke
this
speed
one
time.
I've
got
a
invoked
disc
speed
with
the
right
parameters,
and
you
know
run
this
get
counter
and
that's
but
still
manual
intervention.
When
I
want
this
to
kick
off
near
twenty
times
in
a
row,
I
don't
have
to
sit
there
and
babysit
at
the
whole
time.
So
the
end
result.
A
I
started
a
get
counter
in
a
background.
Job
I've
got
a
few
little
arguments
here,
so
the
duration
is
how
long
disk
speed
runs
for
the
warmup
time
was
kind
of
baked
in
there.
Then
the
job
runs
for
the
total
time,
where
it
counts
that
many
samples
are
the
the
samples
are
once
every
second.
So
it's
nice
that
we're
dealing
with
seconds
for
everything
here
capture
the
start
time
run
this
speed.
Meanwhile,
the
job
is
running
in
the
background.
A
Now
it's
got
everything
that
that
we
needed,
including
beverage,
cooling,
and
so
then
the
final
step
was
to
basically
just
call
this
whole
thing
just
actually
or
in
a
loop.
So
this
example
calls
it
ten
times.
I
invoke
that
whole
thing:
I
sleep
for
five
seconds
or,
however
long
in
between
let
the
system
kind
of
cool
down
some
and
then
convert
the
results
to
a
CSV
output
that
I
ran
that
before.
A
So
we
don't
have
to
wait,
for
you
know,
minutes
for
this
to
run,
but
basically
now
you've
got
a
really
nice
data
set
with
all
the
values,
and
you
know
if
you
wanted
to
you-
could
use
the
tab,
delimiter
pipe
it
to
the
clipboard,
and
if
I
had
Excel
installed
on
this
VM,
then
you
could
just
paste
it
into
Excel
and
you
ready
to
go.
So
that's
that's
it.
That's
super
cool.