Re: 10GB Ethernet Cards

[DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sam,

    Open IBM i Navigator and then open Management Central.  Expand 
Monitors and create a new monitor. Add a metric for Ethernet there. Now 
watch that and I'm going to bet that the line will appear to match the 
bottom of the graph box.

    You can also right click on the system name then select 'Monitors' 
and then 'Graph History'.  In there select "LAN Utilization (Maximum)" 
and "1 Month" for the dates.  Again I expect you'll see a nearly flat 
line at the bottom of the graph.

    The nature of IBM i with it's data and programs on the same system 
means that network traffic just isn't a big problem. Unless you're 
serving large FTP files or NFS you're unlikely to see any gain whatever 
from 10G.

    Then it also matters how big your system is.  If you only have 8 or 
10 drives and one core it's probable that you wouldn't have the ability 
to push a 10G adapter much beyond 1G anyway!

        - Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis.


On 8/27/2012 9:18 PM, Sam_L wrote:
> Yes, good question.  The network guys are trying to plan replacing old
> switches (I think) and I guess the question of the iSeries came up.
>
> How can I measure utilization on the iSeries side?  (I suppose it is a
> bit much to hope for a WRKACTIP or WRKTCPACT command for network cards?)
>
> The biggest iSeries volume that that goes over the network is Mimix
> replication to our remote back up box.  That fluctuates wildly depending
> on what we are doing in batch, though it generally doesn't take too long
> to catch up.  I imagine they will try to update that bit of the network
> as well.
>
>
> Sam
>
>
> On 8/27/2012 7:52 PM, Mike Cunningham wrote:
> > I don't know costs as we run 3 1GB NICs but a gotcha might be spending money for no real gain. Are you currently running your current nics anywhere near 80% utilization? Do you store and send any large files in some burst method (like sending a 100GB CAD drawing stored in the IFS). If you are not using the 1GB bandwidth going to 10GB isn't going to get you better performance. And the path to the requestor would need to be 10GB all along the way.