HP ProLiant 4500 Novell GroupWise Performance Management on Compaq Servers - Page 19

ECG007.0897 WHITE PAPER (cont.) 1...9 Figure 7 is a graphical representation of one Ethernet segment of 10-Mb/s and 100-Mb/s clients (IPX protocol). The results are from a NetBench 4.0 monitoring session where Total Throughput was captured for a ProLiant 1500 server equipped with a NetFlex-3/P Controller (100-Mb/s TX Module). The graph illustrates that the Total Throughput increased as the number of clients increased, then leveled off at 8 clients. Total Throughput [Mbits/sec] 100.000 80.000 60.000 40.000 20.000 0.000 2 4 6 8 10 Number of Clients or Workstations Figure 7.Result of total throughput In general, if total throughput stays around 50 percent or better on a consistent basis, your LAN is approaching network saturation or may be bottlenecked. In both of our test cases, the LAN saturated at 8 clients. Reaching saturation level with such a low number of clients indicates a need for segmenting the LAN to distribute the work load. As noted, these testing results indicate wire saturation for a very low number of users because NetBench creates a test environment that simulates network demand placed on a file server; every client reads the same data from a data file. The use of a synthetic network measuring program (NetBench) and the even distribution of work caused the low saturation point. Thus, this testing does not represent a typical LAN environment of several hundreds or thousands of users arbitrarily broadcasting over the entire LAN via router(s), bridge(s), and gateways. In a realworld environment, network clients should not reach wire saturation for so few users, as indicated in Table 3 and Figure 6. The table and graphical data show the wire bandwidth difference between 10 Mb/s and 100 Mb/s, as well as the effect of increasing the user load. PERFORMANCE TUNING Bus System Tuning Compaq introduced dual peer PCI buses with the ProLiant 5000 for added performance and reliability. For performance, both buses are independent, allowing a full 267 MB/s of I/O. For added reliability, the ProLiant 5000 offers support for redundant 10/100 TX PCI UTP Network Interface Controllers (NICs) as well as redundant disk controllers. With redundant controllers installed, the system can remain operational even if a disk or network controller fails or if there is a PCI bus failure. Installing redundant controllers on separate PCI buses insures maximum possible reliability. Slot 5, 6, 7, and 8 are on the primary bus; slot 2, 3 and 4 are on the secondary bus.