Detecting, Troubleshooting, and Preventing Congestion in Storage Networks

Chapter 6

Preventing Congestion in Fibre Channel Fabrics

Network congestion can be prevented by eliminating the causes or the source of congestion. For example, increasing the speed of an overutilized link eliminates the cause of congestion. Likewise, disconnecting a slow-drain device eliminates the source (and cause) of congestion. But in production environments, such changes are easier said than done because finding the cause and source of congestion may take a long time. Even once the cause and source are identified, making a change to resolve the problem may not be easy, or it may take a long time. For example, a faulty HBA, which causes congestion due to slow drain, continues to victimize many devices until it is replaced. However, replacing ...