The Solaris System Performance Management course introduces students to performance tuning principles, monitoring utilities and tuning tools for the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS). The presentation includes a review of Solaris subsystems and the utilities provided to monitor system efficiency including sar, vmstat, iostat, netstat, mpstat, nfsstat. This revision also presents tools new to Solaris 10, including dtrace, alongside these well known utilities.
The course format isolates each major system component that affects to system performance data. Each subsystem is presented through a case study that shows how performance bottlenecks can be isolated, confirmed through analysis, and resolved through making adjustments to the system configuration.
The Central Processing Units (CPUs), memory, and input/output (I/O) systems are reviewed to clarify standard techniques for monitoring each one. Monitoring and tuning virtual memory operations, logical volume systems, file systems, and network efficiency are discussed as well, using the case study introduction described above.
The course concludes with a more general case study to examine the full cycle of identifying and resolving performance impediments. The Solaris System Performance Management course includes lab exercises to reinforce skills development.