Tuesday, October 31, 2006
One of the most overlooked factors that has an impact on how well the network is performing is if the data center is getting enough electricity. A number of issues surrounding data centers stem from the fact that companies simply can't get the generators they need to operate these massive data centers:
"The data center building boom has created backlogs for the large generators that provide emergency power, with some facility operators reporting lengthy delays on new units of the most popular models.
'Generator lead time for a nice 2 megawatt diesel engine is now up to a year for one generator,' Josh Snowhorn of Terremark said in a panel at the NANOG conference earlier this year. 'So we can build all the raised floor we want, and then sit around and wait six months for a generator.'" [Data Center Knowledge]
Continue reading "Power Play" »
Friday, October 27, 2006
When it comes to understanding network performance, exploring the following basic definition will help many people find their way deep into the heart of this subject:
Network performance is a process to ensure efficient use of network resources, while minimizing the impact of resource contention.
Continue reading "Understanding Performance Management" »
Thursday, October 26, 2006
By Manish Chacko
This is a story about a typical help desk in a large organization in the continental United States. This is probably true for other parts of the world as well, but I'll refrain from making claims I cannot possibly back up.
With no standard framework for Application Delivery in todays IT environments, generally speaking, the current corporate rules for IT troubleshooting are:
Step 1: Wait for someone to call the help desk.
There really is no Step 2. If nobody calls in, surely everything is going well, right? Huge corporations invest millions of dollars in hiring people to staff help desks, purchasing software to run help desks, and running meaningless reports. Yet, they leave the important troubleshooting to the end user, an end user who doesn't even realize that he's performing that task! End users who don't even know how to spell GUI, much less execute a complex diagnostic procedure.
Of course, the end user isn't exactly going to be responding with scientific measurements used to measure the performance of mission critical applications. He's going to say, "The network is acting slow," or the even more vague, "The network is acting weird."
Lets look at two different scenarios.
Continue reading "God Help the Help Desk" »
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
For the longest time, network engineers—particularly those at ISPs and carriers—have kept close watch on link utilization to help them decide how their networks are doing. Once usage levels creep above various thresholds, their answer to provisioning and capacity planning has invariably been "boost the bandwidth," as something of a panacea for network performance problems.
But while increasing link bandwidth can (and does) address certain kinds of network performance issues, it cannot solve all problems. It’s important to understand that all traffic must be transmitted from one point (the sender) to another (the receiver) across a network link. Any complete network transmission involves numerous such pairs of correspondents, as messages move from their original senders to their ultimate receivers, and replies or responses trace their way back in turn from the ultimate receiver to the original sender. But all such transmissions are subject to these three delay components:
Continue reading "Bandwidth is Not a Panacea" »
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The Gartner Symposium ITXPO was a hotbed of information and debate on the topic of network performance management, and a venue for the exchange of ideas from people throughout the IT industry. We expect this debate to continue at the Gartner Enterprise Networking Summit in Las Vegas November 14-16 and we will report on those details from the event. Don't miss it.
In the mean time, here are some highlights from ITXPO:
Continue reading "Network management the hot topic at Gartner symposium ITXPO" »
