We run a number of compute servers, and we mostly run just a couple of different types of jobs. (Sort of a traditional 80/20 split: 80% of computes are spent on a couple types of jobs, 20% is spent on a very large variety of jobs.)
We benchmark our two important loads whenever we're buying new servers. Surprisingly, some machines perform significantly better on one load, and others perform better on the other. To us, it's non-obvious why that would be so, given what we know about the software running (this software is not written by us, ours falls in the 20% bin).
In any case, this very simplistic try-the-actual-load benchmarking serves us very well.
We benchmark our two important loads whenever we're buying new servers. Surprisingly, some machines perform significantly better on one load, and others perform better on the other. To us, it's non-obvious why that would be so, given what we know about the software running (this software is not written by us, ours falls in the 20% bin).
In any case, this very simplistic try-the-actual-load benchmarking serves us very well.