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The Greatest Tool that Never Worked: har
har is the Hardware Activity Reporter. I’ve never seen it work, but it did help me solve a crucial performance issue. I saw har’s output in an article written in 2001 by Frédéric Parienté, the tool’s...
View ArticleLinux Performance Analysis and Tools
At the Southern California Linux Expo earlier this year (SCaLE 11x) I presented a talk on Linux Performance Analysis and Tools. It’s a great conference, and I was happy to be back. My talk provided an...
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Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud
Systems performance analysis is an important skill for all computer users, whether you’re trying to understand why your laptop is slow, or optimizing the performance of a large-scale production...
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Detecting Outliers
In computer performance, we’re especially concerned about latency outliers: very slow database queries, application requests, disk I/O, etc. The term “outlier” is subjective: there is no rigid...
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Modes and Modality
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the average is the index of central tendency. But what if the tendency isn’t central? I’ve worked many performance issues where the latency or response time...
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Memory Leak (and Growth) Flame Graphs
Memory Leak Memory Flame Graph Your application memory usage is steadily growing, and you are racing against time to fix it. This could either be memory growth due to a misconfig, or a memory leak...
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The TSA Method
TSA Method in class (SmartOS) There are two basic performance analysis methodologies you can use for most performance issues. The first is the resource-oriented USE Method, which provides a checklist...
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Systems Performance: available now
My new book Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is shipping now from your favorite online book supplier (informIT, amazon). Thanks to those who have ordered a copy! I’ve already received...
View ArticleBenchmarking the Cloud
Benchmarking, and benchmarking the cloud, is incredibly error prone. I provided guidance though this minefield in the benchmarking chapter of my book (Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud);...
View ArticleAnother 10 Performance Wins
Following on from my earlier 10 performance wins post, here is another group of 10 I have worked on. # Target Analyzed Key Tool Fixed Specific Improvement 11 redis System DTrace System scheduler 41% 12...
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