Tom Franken - Network Management

Today's inexpensive, high-speed networking equipment has pretty much eliminated problems of performance with a properly configured network. However, it is still important to manage performance both at the server level and at the network level. Oftentimes, a configuration solution can resolve an issue that at first glance seems like it requires more expensive hardware. This is particularly prevalent in wide area connections.

The two problems I've seen most are over-replication of databases and applications that consume 100% of the bandwidth for a burst. Over-replication of databases can happen in an environment where default settings include replication among all servers. Oftentimes some servers don't need a particular database replicated locally. Most of the time, bridgehead servers have not been deployed properly. Both of these issues require an experienced manager to properly configure the servers. Applications that consume 100% of the bandwidth "for a few seconds" will not hurt a web-page download; they can kill a telnet session. Any active session set up from any software that needs a rapid response will suffer a fault if one application is using all the bandwidth at the moment the response is required. Bandwidth management needs to be implemented to eliminate these errors.