Performance Analysis

When choosing servers for a data center, which is NOT a consideration beyond peak performance?

  1. APerformance per watt and electricity costs including cooling
  2. BPreference for the server chassis color
  3. CTotal cost of ownership from purchase to disposal
Show answer and explanation

Answer: B. Preference for the server chassis color

Data centers run servers for years, so total cost of ownership, including electricity, cooling, floor space and maintenance as well as purchase price, is what matters. Comparisons therefore often focus on performance per watt or per dollar on real workloads rather than peak performance. Performance evaluation must begin by deciding what matters most.

  • A. This is an important consideration.
  • B. Correct. It is irrelevant to performance or cost evaluation.
  • C. This is an important consideration.
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More Performance Analysis questions

  1. When evaluating a claim that "the new method is 100× faster," what is most important to check?
  2. Why is SSD performance often stated not only as sequential read bandwidth (MB/s) but also as 4 KB random-read IOPS (I/O operations per second)?
  3. Measuring per-element time for repeatedly reading an array while gradually growing its size shows time rising in steps at certain sizes. Why?
  4. Which is the basic formula for a program's CPU execution time?
  5. A program executing 1 billion instructions runs on a CPU with average CPI 2 and clock frequency 2 GHz. What is the execution time?