System Performance and System Resources

The performance of a computer system depends upon how the system uses and allocates its resources. It is important to monitor your system's performance on a regularly so that you know how it behaves under normal conditions. You should have a good idea of what to expect, and be able to recognize a problem when it occurs.

System resources that affect performance include:

• Central processing unit (CPU) - The CPU processes instructions, fetching instructions from memory and executing them.

• Input/output (I/O) devices - I/O devices transfer information into and out of the computer. Such a device could be a terminal and keyboard, a disk drive, or a printer.

• Memory - Physical (or main) memory is the amount of memory (RAM) on the system.

Chapter 64, Monitoring Performance (Tasks) describes the tools that display statistics about the activity and the performance of the computer system.

Other Sources of Information

Performance is a broad subject that can't be adequately covered in these chapters. There are several books available that cover various aspects of improving performance and tuning your system or network. Three useful books are:

• Sun Performance and Tuning: SPARC and Solaris, by Adrian Cockcroft, SunSoft Press/PRT Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-149642-3

• System Performance Tuning, by Mike Loukides, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.

• Managing NFS and NIS, by Hal Stern, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.