Diagnosing an Unbalanced Workload on the Storage Processors

An EMC disk array comes with at least two storage processors. Normally, the workload is shared among the different processors. Under certain conditions (controller fail over, misconfiguration, etc.) it may happen that one controller is handling the majority of the workload while the other one stays almost idle. This would typically result in slower performance for the hosts.

SAN administrators may then consider upgrading various parts of their infrastructure while simply properly sharing the workload among the controllers would solve the performance problem.

Build a multi-parameter graph with the ProcessorUtilization of every CLARiiON controller instance.

Comparing the Processor Utilization of your CLARiiON controllers

1.	In the console, double-click the ProcessorUtilization parameter of the first CLARiiON controller for which you need to compare the activity. A graph is automatically displayed in the graph pane.

2.	Select the ProcessorUtilization parameter of the second CLARiiON controller and drag it from the tree view of the Operator tab to the graph. The second parameter is automatically added to the first one to facilitate the comparison. Compare the values to evaluate the workload distribution.

GRAPH_Processor_Utilization_2Controllers

Comparing Controllers Processor Utilization