Detecting Unbalanced Workload Distribution on Controllers

A storage controller manages the flow of information between the server and the data, assigning two paths, in case one of the paths fails or is overloaded. For the best levels of performance and availability, every layer of technology must be balanced.

Compare the throughput of your controllers

1.	In the console, double-click the TransferByteRate parameter of the first controller. A graph is automatically displayed in the graph pane.

TREE_ControllerAB_TransferByteRate

Selecting TransferByteRate Parameters

2.	Select the TransferByteRate parameter of the second 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_ControllerAB_TransferByteRate

Comparing Controllers Workload Distribution

For example, if the throughput on one controller is significantly higher than the other one, it indicates that one on the controllers may constitute a bottleneck for the subsystem that could be alleviated by better sharing the load between the controllers.

Administrators should pay close attention to which logical drive is handled by which controller, depending on the activity of this logical drives to be able to reallocates controller to drive I/O activity so that neither controller is overloaded.