Testing Linux IO (block device) bandwidth

1. hdparm and seeker
http://www.linuxinsight.com/how_fast_is_your_disk.html?page=1
2. fio
http://www.linux.com/feature/131063
3. Linux test tools
http://ltp.sourceforge.net/tooltable.php
4. iostat
http://www.linuxinsight.com/iostat_utility.html
5. Collectl
http://collectl.sourceforge.net/

IO scheduler on Xen

Running Xen book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=XS-Jj7s2nhYC&pg=PA467&lpg=PA467&dq=CFQ+Xen&source=bl&ots=UUJJrX36AZ&sig=c3iyq1rNYh5WsXdz4pyKVMxE5pU&hl=en&ei=SxqoSZ2DEY-ctwfI7Pj7Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result
Xen devel:
http://www.mailinglistarchive.com/xen-devel@lists.xensource.com/msg12022.html
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2005-11/msg00371.html

Change the scheduler:

Q: I am experiencing a heavy slowdown of the entire dom0 and all other domUs if one domU gets under heavy load.Is there any way to tighten this domU by adjusting something like scheduling?
A: You can use elevator=cfq as the command line option for both the dom0 and domU kernels in grub.conf and /etc/xen domU config files respectively. This will force the use of cfq as the default scheduler. By default anticipatory is the scheduler in dom0 and noop in domU. Alternatively:echo "cfq" > /sys/block/sda/queue/scheduler

Xen passthrough IO

http://www.wlug.org.nz/XenPciPassthrough
http://forums.opensuse.org/install-boot-login/400984-xen-passthrough-nic.html#post1903926
http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-users/2007-11/msg00684.html
http://www.novell.com/communities/node/2880/assign-dedicated-network-card-or-pci-device-xen-virtual-machine
http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/Assign_hardware_to_DomU_with_PCIBack_as_module