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SANtricity 11.8

What is Automatic Load Balancing?

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The Automatic Load Balancing feature provides automated I/O balancing and ensures that incoming I/O traffic from the hosts is dynamically managed and balanced across both controllers.

The Automatic Load Balancing feature provides improved I/O resource management by reacting dynamically to load changes over time and automatically adjusting volume controller ownership to correct any load imbalance issues when workloads shift across the controllers.

The workload of each controller is continually monitored and, with cooperation from the multipath drivers installed on the hosts, can be automatically brought into balance whenever necessary. When workload is automatically re-balanced across the controllers, the storage administrator is relieved of the burden of manually adjusting volume controller ownership to accommodate load changes on the storage array.

When Automatic Load Balancing is enabled, it performs the following functions:

  • Automatically monitors and balances controller resource utilization.

  • Automatically adjusts volume controller ownership when needed, thereby optimizing I/O bandwidth between the hosts and the storage array.

Note

Any volume assigned to use a controller's SSD Cache is not eligible for an automatic load balance transfer.