Key Metrics for Effective Storage Performance and Capacity Reporting - Backend Metrics (9 of 10)

Below are some metrics available on the back end storage array:

These are typical performance metrics showing throughput and response times, the type of thing you need to report on regularly so that you can be on top of performance before incidents start being generated.

Performance Capacity – Array Metrics

The key metrics that you need to get a handle on at volume level are throughput, response and latency.

Below is an example of NetApp metrics at volume level.

and below an example of metrics within EMC at the volume level.

The read/write ratio can give you an idea of what your work profile looks like.

Performance Capacity – Component Breakdown

The example below, using athene^®, shows a component breakdown for the server.

It’s essential to know whether you have any queuing going on (shown in yellow above), if queuing is happening you are exceeding the devices throughput rate.

In the final part of my blog series on Monday I’ll take a look at workload profiles, scorecards and dashboards.

Dale Feiste

Principal Consultant

Array Architecture and Metrics - Key Metrics for Effective Storage Performance and Capacity Reporting(8 of 10)

Today I said we’d take a look at Array Architecture. This is an example of an enterprise type array comprising of

•       Front End Processors

•       Shared Cache

•       Back End Processors

•       Disk Storage

A lot of time these disks can be striped across the entire array, a very large number of spindles tied together to provide a very large resource.

Quite often on these large arrays bottlenecks will occur on the front end processor, requests coming in will queue up there.

Performance Capacity – Array Metrics

As mentioned front end processors are typically the first to bottleneck, below is an example showing just one day.

This is ideal information for trending, if you picked up these processors over a period of time you could do a trend going forward and figure out when and where bottlenecks are likely to occur.

On Friday I’ll be looking at back end metrics. In the meantime sign up to belong to our Community and listen to the live recording of this series http://www.metron-athene.com/_downloads/on-demand-webinars/index.asp

Dale Feiste

Principal Consultant