Disk Balance View

Function:

• To display the load balance between disk drives.

Description:

• This view displays the load on each disk drive as a percentage.

• As CPU speeds continue to increase, the disk subsystem is increasingly the primary performance bottleneck of most systems. If you have multiple disk drives, it is recommended that you ensure that the load between the disk drives is effectively balanced. If it is not, overall system throughput will be diminished because one or more of the drives is under-utilized. The File System Balance View can highlight the cause of any imbalance by identifying the most heavily used file systems. You may also wish to consult the Process I/O View to isolate any particular processes that are particularly heavy in I/O usage.

• The job of balancing your drives is made easier if you use a virtual file system or logical volume software that transparently distributes a file system over many segments on possibly different disk drives. In this case you can move hot-spot segments to disk drives that are lightly loaded and effectively balance the drives.