70-292 Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment for a W2K MCSA Study Guide

Demo Question 11.

You work as the network administrator at EliteCertify.com. The EliteCertify.com network consists of a single Active Directory domain named EliteCertify.com. All servers on the EliteCertify.com network run Windows Server 2003. The EliteCertify.com network contains a member server named EliteCertify -SR31 that contains a single SCSI hard disk. A EliteCertify.com employee named Mia Hamm works in the Research and Development department. One morning she complains that server performance is slow. You then configure System Monitor to report performance values for EliteCertify -SR31 at regular 30-second intervals. After six of these intervals, System Monitor reports the values displayed in the table below. Computer name Interval 1 Interval 2 Interval 3 Interval 4 Interval 5 Interval 6 PhysicalDisk, & Disk Read Time 5 2 8 3 0 1 PhysicalDisk, % Disk Write Time 20 30 5 15 35 30 Which of the following is the action that you should perform to improve disk performance?

A. You should replace the existing hard disk with a striped volume that uses disks with performance characteristics similar to those of the existing hard disk.
B. You should replace the existing hard disk with a RAID. 5 disk array that uses disks with performance characteristics similar to those of the existing hard disk.
C. You should utilize Disk Management to clear the Compress drive to save disk space option on the dynamic volume.
D. You should utilize Disk Management to disable write caching on the physical disk.


Display Answer

Answer: A

Explanation: A striped volume is where data is written to 2 to 32 physical disks at the same rate. It offers maximum performance and capacity but no fault tolerance. Striped volumes use RAID. 0, which stripes data across multiple disks. Striped volumes cannot be extended or mirrored, and do not offer fault tolerance. If one of the disks containing a striped volume fails, the entire volume fails. When creating striped volumes, it is best to use disks that are the same size, model, and manufacturer. With a striped volume, data is divided into blocks and spread in a fixed order among all the disks in the array, similar to spanned volumes. Striping writes files across all disks so that data is added to all disks at the same rate. Despite their lack of fault tolerance, striped volumes offer the best performance of all the Windows disk management strategies and provide increased I/O performance by distributing I/O requests across disks. For example, striped volumes offer improved performance when: E. Reading from or writing to large databases. F. Collecting data from external sources at very high transfer rates. G. Loading program images, dynamic-link libraries (DLLs), or run-time libraries. Incorrect answers: B. A RAID. 5 volume is where data is written to 3 to 32 physical disks at the same rate, and is interlaced with parity to provide fault tolerance for a single disk failure. Good read performance; good utilization of disk capacity; expensive in terms of processor utilization and write performance as parity must be calculated during write operations. C. Compression is usually implemented in cases where space needs to be conserved. The question does not mention or ask for space to be used or saved. D. Caching is process used to enhance performance by retaining previously-accessed information in a location that provides faster response than the original location. Hard disk caching is used by the File and Print Sharing for Microsoft Networks service, which stores recently accessed disk information in memory for faster retrieval. Thus disabling caching on the physical disk will result in slower performance. Reference: Dan Holme and Orin Thomas, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-290): Managing and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment, pp. 450, pp. 451 and pp. 465.