System Performance Tuning

[TStanley]

Item Description: Get the most out of your system and code before you upgrade

Review Synopsis: A worthy addition to your library, especially for those involved with system performance

Table of contents
Preface

1. An Introduction to Performance Tuning
• An Introduction to Computer Architecture
• Principles of Performance Tuning
• Static Performance Tuning
• Concluding Thoughts
2. Workflow Management
• Workflow Characterization
• Workload Control
• Benchmarking
• Concluding Thoughts
3. Processors
• Microprocessor Architecture
• Caching
• Process Scheduling
• Multiprocessing
• Peripheral Interconnects
• Processor Performance Tools
• Concluding Thoughts
4. Memory
• Implementations of Physical Memory
• Virtual Memory Architecture
• Paging and Swapping
• Consumers of Memory
• Tools for Memory Performance Analysis
• Concluding Thoughts
5. Disks
• Disk Architecture
• Interfaces
• Common Performance Problems
• Filesystems
• Tools for Analysis
• Concluding Thoughts
6. Disk Arrays
• Terminology
• RAID Levels
• Software Versus Hardware
• A Summary of Disk Array Design
• Software RAID Implementations
• RAID Recipes
• Concluding Thoughts
7. Networks
• Network Principles
• Physical Media
• Network Interfaces
• Network Protocols
• NFS
• CFS via Unix
• Concluding Thoughts
8. Code Tuning
• The Two Critical Approaches
• Techniques for Code Analysis
• Optimization Patterns
• Interacting with Compilers
• Concluding Thoughts
9. Instant Tuning
• Top Five Tuning Tips
• Instant Tuning Recipes

Index

The newest version of this book is targeted primarily at the Solaris and Linux operating environments, but its principles are general enough that they can be easily applied to any other type of Unix operating environment.

The book is well organized, with each chapter dealing with the optimization of a specific subsystem of the typical server, and each chapter introduces various tools for getting the specific information that is needed to base a decision upon.

Of special interest to us is the chapter dealing with code tuning, which is often overlooked when trying to tune a system for better performance. Another area that is covered is the tuning of the network, which at times may seem to be an exercise in frustration, but can be extremely beneficial in the long run.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has to deal with system performance issues, and is trying to get the most out of their system.

[sparkyichi]

Have you had a chance to try out some of the techniques that are presented in the book? How did they work out? Can you use what is presented in the book without modification for your setup? What kind or results did you get? Was there a significant increase in performance?

Sparky
FMTEYEWTK

[TStanley]

The book was written mainly for the Solaris and Linux operating systems, and the system that I am the administrator for is HP-UX, which is very similar to Solaris, although, Sun has some additional tools for monitoring that mine doesn't. And although Linux is a fairly new operating system, the authors provide links to websites where you can download the tools that they do mention.
The only thing I found that I had to modify was the arguments to the commands that the book used, as some were slightly different, but other than that, the output came out as expected.
And right now, I am still in the process of gathering the results and trying to organize/understand them. So once I get a handle on that, I can then try to apply that knowledge to the system.

TStanley
--------
"Suppose you were an idiot... And suppose you were a
member of Congress... But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain