Data Center Storage

Chapter 15

Performance and Backup

Backup is an I/O workload that impacts limited resources.

The diagram in Figure 15.1 shows a typical server which is overprovisioned. In other words, the hardware is significantly bigger than the workload; you paid too much. The dotted line represents the I/O load; it shifts around a lot because, in this example, this is presumed to be a small server with only one or two workloads, dependent on a small list of users. Therefore, the workload fluctuates more than a bigger server or bigger storage array serving more applications and more users.

In Figure 15.1, we see a couple of backup tasks. Sometimes these backup tasks hit at low points and sometimes they hit at highpoints. And when they hit at high points, ...