ITPE maintains a well equipped lab to evaluate new technology and methods.  

We utilize 5 HP DL360 servers and gigabit Ethernet to test "out of the box" factory performance (default settings), configurations, parameter changes, and new equipment for different operating environments.

Our environment is always changing, but currently includes:

• Windows Server 2008 - 32 and 64 bit
• Windows Server 2003 - 32 and 64 bit
• Windows 7 beta 
• Red Hat Lunix
• VMware ESX
• Windows XP
• Windows Vista

For example, we recently tested the performance of a Texas Memory Systems RamSan storage unit.  This device uses RAM (backed up by a hard disk or flash memory) to provide a VERY fast Fibre Channel based storage pool.  Initally, our client as able to obtain 361MB/sec of throughput using 2 x 4Gb FC connections on a single PCI-E Qlogic card.

After ITPE optimized the parameters and configuration, we were able to obtain 760MB/sec of throughput, very close to the theoretical maximum of the device.   ITPE DOUBLED the utilization and throughput through tuning.

Did You Know?

Teaming of Network Adapters (NIC's) can increase the throughput of your server.   Teaming requires 2 or more Ethernet ports on the server, and a LACP capable Ethernet Switch for switch aware load balancing.

Many low end Ethernet switches do not support true teaming - many only support an active/passive port configuration.

Be sure to use the vendor supplied Teaming Utility to ensure that ALL ports in the team are identically configured.

There are multiple options for teaming - to maximize throughput requires careful research and configuration.

Did You Know?

The Storage I/O bandwidth on your server also effects network performance...

Once the data is received through the Ethernet cards, it needs to be permantly stored, and that requires an I/O subsystem that has at least the same available bandwidth as the Ethernet network.   A single gigabit Ethernet port can transmit or receive 100 million characters (bytes a second).

Many factors effect storage performance,including disk speed, disk size, RAID levels, the storage controllers, I/O bus speeds, device configuration, CPU capacity, available memory, and FSB speeds.