About This Guide

This guide discusses adjustments you can make that may improve the performance of Sun™ Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) Web Server 6.1. The guide provides tuning, scaling, and sizing tips and suggestions; possible solutions to common performance problems; and data from scalability studies. It also addresses miscellaneous configuration and platform-specific issues, and describes the perfdump performance utility and tuning parameters that are built into the server.

Who Should Use This Guide

This guide is intended for advanced administrators only. Be sure to read this guide and other relevant server documentation before making any changes. Be very careful when tuning your server, and always back up your configuration files before making any changes.

Using the Documentation

The Sun ONE Web Server manuals are available as online files in PDF and HTML formats from the following location:

The following table lists the tasks and concepts described in the Sun ONE Web Server manuals.

Table 1 **Sun ONE Web Server Documentation Roadmap**
For Information About	See the Following
Late-breaking information about the software and documentation	Release Notes
Getting started with Sun ONE Web Server, including hands-on exercises that introduce server basics and features (recommended for first-time users)	Getting Started Guide
Performing installation and migration tasks: Installing Sun ONE Web Server and its various components, supported platforms, and environments Migrating from Sun ONE Web Server 4.1 or 6.0 to Sun ONE Web Server 6.1	Installation and Migration Guide
Performing the following administration tasks: Using the Administration and command-line interfaces Configuring server preferences Using server instances Monitoring and logging server activity Using certificates and public key cryptography to secure the server Configuring access control to secure the server Using Java™ 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE™ platform) security features Deploying applications Managing virtual servers Defining server workload and sizing the system to meet performance needs Searching the contents and attributes of server documents, and creating a text search interface Configuring the server for content compression Configuring the server for web publishing and content authoring using WebDAV	Administrator’s Guide
Using programming technologies and APIs to do the following: Extend and modify Sun ONE Web Server Dynamically generate content in response to client requests Modify the content of the server	Programmer’s Guide
Creating custom Netscape Server Application Programmer’s Interface (NSAPI) plugins	NSAPI Programmer’s Guide
Implementing servlets and JavaServer Pages™ (JSP™) technology in Sun ONE Web Server	Programmer’s Guide to Web Applications
Editing configuration files	Administrator’s Configuration File Reference Guide
Tuning Sun ONE Web Server to optimize performance	Performance Tuning, Sizing, and Scaling Guide

How This Guide Is Organized

Chapter 1, "Performance and Monitoring Overview"

This chapter provides a general discussion of server performance considerations, and more specific information about monitoring server performance.

Chapter 2, "Tuning Sun ONE Web Server"

This chapter describes specific adjustments you can make that may improve Sun ONE Web Server performance.

Chapter 3, "Miscellaneous Performance Topics"

This chapter describes miscellaneous performance topics, including discussion of magnus.conf and obj.conf settings that can be used to improve server performance.

Chapter 4, "Common Performance Problems"

This chapter discusses common web site performance problems, and offers tips and solutions.

Chapter 5, "Platform-specific Issues and Tips"

This chapter provides platform-specific tuning tips.

Chapter 6, "Sizing and Scaling Your Server"

This chapter examines the subsystems of your server, and provides recommendations for optimal performance.

Chapter 7, "Scalability Studies"

This chapter describes the results of scalability studies. You can use these studies as examples of how you might configure your system to best take advantage of Sun ONE Web Server’s strengths.

Documentation Conventions

File and directory paths

These are given in UNIX® format (with forward slashes separating directory names). For Windows versions, the directory paths are the same, except that backslashes are used to separate directories.

URLs are given in the format:

http://server.domain/path/file.html

In these URLs, server is the server name where applications are run; domain is your Internet domain name; path is the server's directory structure; and file is an individual file name. Italic items in URLs are placeholders.

Font conventions include:

The monospace font is used for sample code and code listings, API and language elements (such as function names and class names), file names, path names, directory names, and HTML tags.

Italic monospace type is used for code variables.

Italic type is also used for book titles, emphasis, variables and placeholders, and words used in the literal sense.

Bold type is used as either a paragraph lead-in or to indicate words used in the literal sense.

Installation root directories are indicated by install_dir in this guide.

By default, the location of install_dir is as follows:

On UNIX-based platforms: /opt/SUNWwbsvr/

On Windows: C:\Sun\WebServer6.1

Product Support

If you have problems with your system, contact customer support using one of the following mechanisms:

Please have the following information available prior to contacting support. This helps to ensure that our support staff can best assist you in resolving problems: