Lab Paperwork

WK 3 Assignment

1.) A bottleneck, in a communications context, is a point in the enterprise where the flow of data[->0] is impaired or stopped entirely. Effectively, there isn't enough data handling capacity to handle the current volume of traffic. A bottleneck can occur in the user network or storage fabric or within server[->1]s where there is excessive contention for internal server resources, such as CPU[->2] processing power, memory[->3], or I/O[->4] (input/output). As a result, data flow slows down to the speed of the slowest point in the data path. This slow down affects application performance[->5], especially for database[->6]s and other heavy transactional applications, and can even cause some applications to crash. A bottleneck frequently arises from poor network or storage fabric designs. Mismatched hardware selection is a common cause. For example, if a workgroup server is fitted with a Gigabit Ethernet[->7] port[->8] but the corresponding switch[->9] port that connects to the server only offers a legacy 10/100 Ethernet[->10] port, the slow switch port will then pose a bottleneck to the server. Another design flaw common to storage networks is excess fan-in[->11], where multiple storage devices are connected to the same switch port in order to maximize the use of that switch port's bandwidth. For example, connecting multiple four- gigabit (GB[->12]) Fibre Channel storage devices to the same switch port can easily overwhelm the switch port and result in performance problems if multiple storage devices are active simultaneously. In many cases, bottlenecks develop over time because administrators fail to track the increasing demands of network and storage traffic. Bottlenecks can also develop due to poor or sub-optimal configuration of switches or host bus adapters (HBA[->13]s). For example, using multiple Fibre Channel[->14] ports to connect devices within the storage switching fabric[->15] can improve storage availability and performance but if...