Tuning Principles

Performance tuning requires a deep understanding of hardware, OSs, and applications, as well as optimizing their interactions to maximize system performance and continuously satisfy business needs. To ensure reliable tuning results, observe the following principles:

• Comprehensively analyze resource bottlenecks. When analyzing system performance, use performance analysis tools such as nmon to examine the system resource utilization from multiple dimensions, because a performance dip in one part may result from bottlenecks in other parts or limited resources.
• Tune one variable at a time. During performance parameter tuning, modify only one parameter at a time. If multiple parameters are modified simultaneously, it becomes difficult to determine which one is responsible for the performance impact.
• Account for profiling tool overhead. Profiling tools themselves consume system resources such as CPU and memory. Keep in mind that running these tools can exacerbate existing resource bottlenecks in the system..