Storage Performance Queries:

What is the Host OS?

Are the any OS Patches or hot fixes?
What is the HBA manufacturer? (if applicable)
What is the HBA model? (if applicable)
What is the HBA firmware? (if applicable)
What is the Switch manufacturer? (if applicable)
What is the Switch model? (if applicable)
What is the Switch firmware? (if applicable)
What is this system used for? Database or Application being used (if applicable).
Be specific.
Is there a current performance issue? (Exact figures / numbers)
What is the current performance? (Exact figures / numbers)
What is the expected performance? (Exact figures / numbers)
How was this expectation reached? Documentation, sales, etc?
- If the expectation was set by documentation, please provide the document used
to set expectations so that we can ensure we are addressing those expectations.
Is the expectation a specific latency target or throughput target?
Has the expected performance ever been obtained on this specific system as it is
currently configured?
Has there been any maintenance or changes to the configuration (firmware changes,
file system layout changes, software upgrades, hosts added/removed, and/or volumes
created/deleted)?
Has there been any change to the I/O Profile or I/O Workload (increased I/O,
decreased I/O, random/sequential)?
How is the performance being measured/monitored? What application is being used?
Where is the performance issue being seen storage side or host/application side?
What is the business impact?
Is the performance issue impacting all applications or a specific application?
(Identify the affected application(s) by name. Be specific)
Is the performance issue impacting all volumes or a specific volume? (Identify the
affected volume(s) by name. Be specific)
Is the performance issue impacting all users or specific users? (Identify what the
affected users utilize the system for)
Is it experienced only during certain times of day or during certain I/O loads?
(Identify the time of day and/or quantify I/O loads. Be specific)
Is the performance issue constant or intermittent?
- If the issue is intermittent, please provide a manual support data collection
from the storage while the performance issue is occurring.
Performance can be tuned from the file system/application perspective as well as
from the E-Series storage perspective. The following are some basic factors to
investigate from the storage perspective:

Storage Factors

Is cache enabled? Is the state currently suspended?

Are any volume groups degraded?
Are there any exclusive operations in progress (drive reconstruction and dynamic
volume expansion)?
Are there more partial writes versus full? See 'write algorithms' in evfShowVol in
the stateCapture.
Are there any drive-side issues reported (Destination driver events or check
conditions in MEL, high SAS phy errors, and drive-side timeouts)?
Are there any indications of a slow drive (iditnall queue depth)?
Are there any degraded SAS wide ports or FC drive side channels?
Are there any controller reboots or failovers during the time frame that
performance impact is reported?
Is the RAID level appropriate for the workload?
Is the RAID segment size in harmony with the host application (important to avoid
read-modify-write penalties)? What is the typical I/O size? Is the I/O
random/sequential/mixed?