The caching of code and data is a common technique used throughout the Windows Operating System in order to improve system and application performance. While System Performance is a difficult subject, this work represents a digestable look at performance by isolating the top fifteen or so ways that caching is used in the Windows 7 Operating System. A book that not only explains how performance, but gives the reader techniques to investigate on his or her own. Each of the caching techniques described and detailed, and experiments are provided that the reader may use to look further into the performance of their own systems. Even performance experts will learn something new from this book. Numerous free tools are used for these experiments, and the appendix provides an excellent guide to using these tools. This book represents the culmination of years of research and a series of presentations made by the Author in front of audiences around the world.

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.

In the Complete Guide .NET Performance and Optimization, Paul Glavich and Chris Farrell offer a comprehensive and essential handbook to anybody looking to set up a .NET testing environment and get the best results out of it, or just learn effective techniques for testing and optimizing their .NET applications.

Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2 are designed to be the best performing operating systems to date, but even the best systems can be overwhelmed with load and/or plagued with poorly performing code. Windows Performance Analysis Field Guide gives you a practical field guide approach to performance monitoring and analysis from experts who do this work every day. Think of this book as your own guide to "What would Microsoft support do?" when you have a Windows performance issue. Author Clint Huffman, a Microsoft veteran of over fifteen years, shows you how to identify and alleviate problems with the computer resources of disk, memory, processor, and network. You will learn to use performance counters as the initial indicators, then use various tools to "dig in" to the problem, as well as how to capture and analyze boot performance problems. - This field guide gives you the tools and answers you need to improve Microsoft Windows performance - Save money on optimizing Windows performance with deep technical troubleshooting that tells you "What would Microsoft do to solve this?" - Includes performance counter templates so you can collect the right data the first time. - Learn how to solve performance problems using free tools from Microsoft such as the Windows Sysinternals tools and more. - In a rush? Chapter 1 Start Here gets you on the quick path to solving the problem. - Also covers earlier versions such as Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

An authoritative guide to Windows NT driver development, now completely revised and updated. The CD-ROM includes all source code, plus Microsoft hardware standards documents, demo software, and more.

Microsoft offers comprehensive tools and techniques for optimizing the performance of today's complex Windows systems, application software, services, and drivers, however understanding them enough to be able to apply them can be a challenge. Windows performance analysis has traditionally been viewed as a mysterious "black art," but IT professionals and developers who can master it will gain a substantial competitive advantage in the marketplace and learn a lot about the inner workings of Windows in the process. In this book, three Microsoft insiders draw on their unsurpassed Windows performance expertise, systematically teaching how to measure performance in production environments, address triage issues, quickly identify root causes, and make the most of today's exceptionally powerful Windows Performance Tools. The only complete, hands-on guide to Windows 7 and Windows Vista performance analysis, this book illuminates each type of performance issue with realistic examples, drilling down to help IT professionals learn to identify the real issues, and quickly solve the problems. Coverage includes: making the most of Windows Performance Analyzer; understanding the performance of processors and Windows' memory management subsystem; identifying resource contention issues; troubleshooting performance issues associated storage, Windows file systems, and the Registry; instrumenting code with ETW, and much more.

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