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Poker, Cheating & Storage Benchmarks: Page 2 of 2

For those of you who don't play cards, there should be only one ace of spades in a deck of cards. So the presence of several in a card game indicates something is seriously wrong and there is cheating taking place. In an old Western movie, it would mean somebody is going to get shot.

But back to storage benchmarks and cheating. Does magoo75 make a valid point? I question his logic. In a real poker game, nobody would win the pot if there were three ace of spades in play. As for benchmarks, we've all heard stories about how this vendor or that vendor tuned its chip or computer or software to show better results on one benchmark test or another. As a result, I don't know of too many people in IT that still pay a lot of attention to benchmark results. To be honest, I don't know enough about SPC benchmarks to know whether they can be gamed or whether many people use them to make purchase decisions.

And I am not criticizing Pillar, which has every right to boast about top results on a third-party benchmark test. I would do the same thing. Nor am I suggesting that there was any sort of cheating going on. But the discussion causes me to wonder how much weight people give benchmark results if so many think of them as a game. So I ask you, dear reader: Do you pay attention to benchmark results? Do you consider them valid? Does everybody cheat? Do you use benchmarks them to make buying decisions? Let me know by clicking "Discuss" below or join the discussion on the message board.