Compaq 108164-003 - ProLiant - 800 White Paper page 19

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