Administration Guide

Performance Improvement Process

Use the following process to improve the performance of any system:

1. Establish performance indicators.
2. Define performance objectives.
3. Develop a performance monitoring plan.
4. Carry out the plan.
5. Analyze your measurements to determine whether you have met your objectives. If you have, consider reducing the number of measurements you make because performance monitoring itself uses system resources. Otherwise, continue with the next step.
6. Determine the major constraints in the system.
7. Decide where you can afford to make trade-offs and which resources can bear additional load. (Nearly all tuning involves trade-offs among system resources and the various elements of performance.)
8. Adjust the configuration of your system. If you think that it is feasible to change more than one tuning option, implement one at a time. If there are no options left at any level, you have reached the limits of your resources and need to upgrade your hardware.
9. Return to Step 4 above and continue to monitor your system.

Periodically, or after significant changes to your system or work load:

• Return to Step 1 above.
• Re-examine your objectives and indicators.
• Refine your monitoring and tuning strategy.