-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On 04/21/2011 08:55 AM, Doug Weimer wrote: > Many comments in the 'amount of swap' thread mentioned the importance of > understanding a system's workload. This is something that I often > struggle with. What tools and techniques do you use to better understand > the expected workload for a system? Tools like top, iostat, and vmstat > give a picture of a systems current state. How do you take the next step > to understand why the system is in it's current state and what > changes/upgrades would alleviate the problem?
One of my favorite tools is sar from the sysstat package. It samples a bunch of data and you can see it over time. I don't think there is a magic bullet though. I would recommend checking out the performance characteristics on a continual basis. Save your data its infinitely helpful when going to diagnose an issue to have some historical or baseline data to look at. For me performance analysis seems like an organic process, I look at sar output first and usually that 10k foot view will give me an idea of what might be wrong. From there I explore what might be causing that bottle neck. Many times you can solve a performance issue not by adding more resources, but by doing less work. Doing less work will usually require application or business knowledge to know where you might be able to do less work. But those are worthwhile to look into. In my experience they frequently have the biggest payoffs (but can be more difficult to identify). - -- Nick Anderson <n...@cmdln.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQEcBAEBCAAGBQJNsDukAAoJEO89q5kwvK+dvFwH/icHmOHWTMcs8pj4WuoSPgCO sW8yHuP4KqTgvvxwAT9ii4ifjANG0phZ+jACPNOQvOW6eMUD4+aIn+mSlOxbrAsw kgSM1l7TJ1RtHhsfKmZkh9MGQF5mwWrOwy2xGQ94M4Afr6138Bkl8ZFDR1QlafE8 YbxIbhXDuvUDkoY+V76haUHdU2BnSSfr0vRfj4AwuLF6Wub3FDYF6TVF1kXSUGil VuQv11WSh1IHFXrZVpKe2Fg7ZyTQSVRS2CHqArCdteCJSfmZnCkivdRKWX1/yHHh W0BkV6VQljm6mci3F54WwJVqtrccIJDh6cg2eb9EYhFeChwFgUkmG7yGIkZqN2s= =F7np -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list Tech@lists.lopsa.org https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
