Storage can limit the performance of enterprise workloads. It is one of the most common bottlenecks in performance. You should know how to design a storage system, monitor a host's storage throughput, and troubleshoot problems that result in overloaded storage and slow storage performance.

There are many catalysts that affect storage performance. These are:

• Improper configuration of a storage device
• Storage protocols
• Queuing and LUN queue depth
• Load balancing across available storage
• VMFS configuration:
  • Characteristics of VMFS and RDMs
  • SCSI reservations
• Virtual disk types
• Placing more I/O demand than the storage is architected to deliver