Based on the author's experience in industry, this book focuses on simple techniques for solving everyday problems in systems design and analysis. All techniques are covered in a non-mathematical way, so that no statistics expertise is necessary.

The Complete Guide to Optimizing Systems Performance Written by the winner of the 2013 LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement in System Administration Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tools, and metrics for analyzing and tuning even the most complex environments. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud focuses on Linux(R) and Unix(R) performance, while illuminating performance issues that are relevant to all operating systems. You'll gain deep insight into how systems work and perform, and learn methodologies for analyzing and improving system and application performance. Gregg presents examples from bare-metal systems and virtualized cloud tenants running Linux-based Ubuntu(R), Fedora(R), CentOS, and the illumos-based Joyent(R) SmartOS(TM) and OmniTI OmniOS(R). He systematically covers modern systems performance, including the "traditional" analysis of CPUs, memory, disks, and networks, and new areas including cloud computing and dynamic tracing. This book also helps you identify and fix the "unknown unknowns" of complex performance: bottlenecks that emerge from elements and interactions you were not aware of. The text concludes with a detailed case study, showing how a real cloud customer issue was analyzed from start to finish. Coverage includes - Modern performance analysis and tuning: terminology, concepts, models, methods, and techniques - Dynamic tracing techniques and tools, including examples of DTrace, SystemTap, and perf - Kernel internals: uncovering what the OS is doing - Using system observability tools, interfaces, and frameworks - Understanding and monitoring application performance - Optimizing CPUs: processors, cores, hardware threads, caches, interconnects, and kernel scheduling - Memory optimization: virtual memory, paging, swapping, memory architectures, busses, address spaces, and allocators - File system I/O, including caching - Storage devices/controllers, disk I/O workloads, RAID, and kernel I/O - Network-related performance issues: protocols, sockets, interfaces, and physical connections - Performance implications of OS and hardware-based virtualization, and new issues encountered with cloud computing - Benchmarking: getting accurate results and avoiding common mistakes This guide is indispensable for anyone who operates enterprise or cloud environments: system, network, database, and web admins; developers; and other professionals. For students and others new to optimization, it also provides exercises reflecting Gregg's extensive instructional experience.

Table of contents

Written with computer scientists and engineers in mind, this book brings queueing theory decisively back to computer science.

Sets out the fundamental techniques used in analyzing and understanding the performance of computer systems.

An overview of queueing network modelling. Conducting a modelling study. Fundamental laws. General analytic technique. Bounds on performance. Models with one job class. Models with multiple job classes. Flow equivalence and hierarchical modelling. Representing specific subsystems. Memory. Disk I/O. Processors. Parameterization. Existing systems. Evolving systems. Proposed systems. Perspective. Using queueing network modelling software. Appendices. Constructing a model from RMF data. An implementation of single class, exact MVA. An implementation of multiple class, exact MVA. Load dependent service centers. Index.

The seminal guide to performance analysis, with new information and essential advice The Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis is the essential guide to practical performance analysis tools and techniques. This easy to follow guide presents a unique blend of measurement, simulation, and modeling methods in a straightforward, problem-oriented fashion, and integrates essential queuing theory with data analysis, experimental design, and the most powerful tools in performance analysis. This updated edition includes new chapters on Time Series Analysis and Long-Range Dependence, over 150 updated examples and cases studies, and a host of special tricks that demonstrate system superiority. Instructor's Materials, including PowerPoint slides, syllabus, and solutions for expanded exercises beyond the end-of-chapter exercises, is available making it ideal for classroom use. Performance testing measures a system's responsiveness and stability under a particular workload, and can serve to investigate, measure, validate, or verify other quality attributes of the system, including scalability, reliability, and resource usage. This book is the seminal work on the topic, providing expert guidance to systems professionals for over twenty-two years. Comprehensive coverage of all aspects of performance measurement makes it a valuable resource for students and professionals alike. Understand technique and metric criteria, and avoid common mistakes Collect, analyze, and present measurement data with the most powerful techniques Provide the maximum amount of information with the minimum number of experiments Determine the number of sizes of components required (capacity planning) Evaluate design alternatives, correctly compare two or more systems, and determine the optimal value of a parameter (system tuning) Analysis in technology using statistics and other methodologies has become one of the most important, in-demand skills in the corporate and enterprise world. While practitioners may create new systems, they are often asked to modify, expand, or document existing systems – many of which have been grown haphazardly. Art of Computer Systems Performance Analysis provides the information, skills, and tools analysts need to tackle any system with confidence.