You’ve been limping along for several months now, and finally got approval to upgrade your computer system. Take caution, though. Upgrading individual components of an architecture does not guarantee better overall system performance.

Intuitively for the layman, it certainly seems like any upgrade should result in better system performance. The fact of the matter is that today’s systems typically rely on several components, each of which could be a bottleneck.

In no particular order, these components are the processor(s), memory, storage and network. Recently, we worked on a system for a client who had obtained new computers but could not understand why system performance had not markedly increased.

After running a few tests, it was evident that this particular database system was highly dependent on the speed of the processor. It turns out that these folks had bought older systems at a discount, which had processors similar to their previous system. Although they had doubled the memory in the system, that was of no help. In fact, their main system used very little memory.

Conversely, when folks buy new systems, especially if it’s been five years since the last system was bought, the processor is much faster. However, we have seen, on many occasion, newer systems with faster processors not being any faster than the old hardware. This is typically because the system is constrained by the amount of available memory, which is often not increased.

Storage is often a choke point as well. When storage area networks, or SANs, became popular several years ago, they provided a huge upgrade in performance. Many folks, however, are still on so-called first- and second-generation SAN systems which have now become the holdup. Systems that process a relatively large amount of data will see little to no improvement with a new processor, more memory and a 5-year-old SAN.

For cloud-based systems, the bottleneck is often the connection to the Internet. Many folks now host servers in the cloud, either their own or rented from the cloud provider. Most cloud-based systems are designed to minimize the amount of network traffic. Some systems, however, simply cannot be designed in such a manner.

The bottom line is that systems should be evaluated at least minimally before pulling the trigger on an expensive upgrade. Otherwise, expectations will be set that cannot be met.

John Agsalud is an IT expert with more than 25 years of information technology experience in Hawaii and around the world. He can be reached at johnagsalud@yahoo.com.