Storage & NAS · 6 min read

Monitor iSCSI and SAN latency, not just capacity

A SAN with plenty of free space can still be the reason an application is slow. Latency, not capacity, is usually the first sign of a storage problem.

What you'll need

  • A SAN or iSCSI target already reporting in Linivo, ideally with vendor-specific latency OIDs available
1

Check whether your array exposes per-LUN latency

Not every vendor's SNMP MIB includes latency; some only report throughput and IOPS. If yours does, per-LUN read/write latency is usually the more actionable of the two.

2

Set a latency threshold based on your workload, not a generic number

A few milliseconds of latency is fine for bulk file storage and a real problem for a transactional database. Set thresholds per device group rather than one number for every SAN target.

3

Watch for latency without a matching throughput spike

Rising latency at flat or falling throughput often points to a controller or fabric problem rather than genuine load, and is worth flagging differently than latency that scales with a legitimate traffic increase.