Performance Guide

Table of Contents

• About this book
  • How this book is organized
  • Related documentation
  • Typographical conventions
  • How can we improve this book?
• Chapter 1: What determines performance
  • Hardware factors that influence performance
  • Software factors that influence performance
• Chapter 2: Managing performance
  • Tuning methodology
    • Defining performance goals
    • Collecting data
    • Formulating a hypothesis
    • Getting more specifics
    • Making adjustments to the system
  • Performance tuning case studies
  • Managing the workload
• Chapter 3: Tuning CPU resources
  • Operating system states
    • Viewing CPU activity
    • Process states
    • Clock ticks and time slices
    • Context switching
    • Interrupts
    • Calculation of process priorities
    • Examining the run queue
  • Multiprocessor systems
    • Support for multiple processors
    • Using the mpstat load displayer
    • Examining interrupt activity on multiprocessor systems
  • Process scheduling
    • Adjusting the scheduling of processes
    • Controlling priority calculations -- dopricalc
    • Controlling the effective priority of processes -- primove
    • Controlling cache affinity -- cache_affinity
    • Controlling process preemption -- preemptive
    • Load balancing -- loadbalance
  • Identifying CPU-bound systems
  • Tuning CPU-bound systems
• Chapter 4: Tuning memory resources
  • Physical memory
  • Virtual memory
    • Paging
    • Swapping
    • Viewing physical memory usage
    • Viewing swap space usage
    • Viewing swapping and paging activity
  • Identifying memory-bound systems
  • Tuning memory-bound systems
    • Reducing disk activity caused by swapping and paging
    • Increasing memory by reducing the buffer cache size
    • Investigating memory usage by system tables
  • Using graphical clients on low memory systems
  • Tuning X server performance
  • Kernel parameters that affect the X Window System
  • Case study: memory-bound workstation
  • Case study: memory-bound software development system
• Chapter 5: Tuning I/O resources
  • Subsystems that affect disk and other I/O
  • How the buffer cache works
    • Viewing buffer cache activity
    • Increasing disk I/O throughput by increasing the buffer cache size
    • Positioning the buffer cache in memory
    • Tuning the number of buffer cache hash queues
  • How the namei cache works
    • Viewing namei cache activity
    • Reducing disk I/O by increasing the size of the namei cache
  • How multiphysical buffers are used
    • Tuning the number of multiphysical buffers
  • The mechanics of a disk transfer
    • Viewing disk and other block I/O activity
    • Identifying disk I/O-bound systems
    • Tuning disk I/O-bound systems
    • SCSI disk driver request queue
    • Tuning the number of SCSI disk request blocks
    • Filesystem factors affecting disk performance
  • Overcoming performance limitations of hard disks
  • Tuning virtual disk performance
    • Performance considerations for RAID 4 and 5
    • Choosing a cluster size
    • Balancing disk load in virtual disk arrays
    • Tuning virtual disk kernel parameters
  • Serial device resources
    • Tuning serial device resources
    • Configuring your system for high-speed modems
  • Case study: I/O-bound multiuser system
  • Case study: unbalanced disk activity on a database server
• Chapter 6: Tuning networking resources
  • STREAMS resources
    • Monitoring STREAMS performance
    • Tuning STREAMS usage
  • TCP/IP resources
    • Tuning TCP/IP performance
    • Monitoring TCP/IP performance
  • NFS resources
    • Monitoring NFS performance
    • Tuning NFS performance
  • LAN Manager Client Filesystem resources
    • Tuning LAN Manager Client Filesystem performance
  • Other networking resources
  • Case study: intermittently poor network performance
• Chapter 7: Tuning system call activity
  • Viewing system call activity
    • Identifying excessive read and write system call activity
    • Viewing process fork and exec activity
    • Viewing AIO activity
    • Viewing IPC activity
  • Reducing system call activity
  • Case study: semaphore activity on a database server
• Appendix A: Tools reference
  • df -- report disk space usage
  • ps -- check process activity
  • sar -- system activity reporter
    • How sar works
    • Running sar
  • swap -- check and add swap space
  • timex -- examine system activity per command
  • vmstat -- virtual memory statistics
• Appendix B: Configuring kernel parameters
  • Autotuning
  • When to change system parameters
  • Configuration tools
    • Using configure to change kernel resources
    • Using idtune to reallocate kernel resources
    • Kernel parameters that you can change using configure
    • Examining and changing configuration-dependent values
• Appendix C: Configuring TCP/IP tunable parameters
  • Using ifconfig to change parameters for a network card
  • Using inconfig to change global TCP/IP parameters
  • TCP/IP parameters
• Appendix D: Quick system tuning reference
• Bibliography
• Glossary of performance terminology
• Index