This guide is intended for advanced administrators of iPlanet Application Server. This guide helps you tune iPlanet Application Server for maximum performance and reliability. It is recommended that you backup your configuration files, before changing the configuration settings on iPlanet Application Server.

This chapter describes the contents of iPlanet Application Server Installation Guide. It contains the following sections:

• Using the Documentation

• About This Guide

• What You Should Know

• How This Guide is Organized

• Documentation Conventions

Using the Documentation

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The following table lists the tasks and concepts that are described in the iPlanet Application Server manuals and Release Notes. If you are trying to accomplish a specific task or learn more about a specific concept, refer to the appropriate manual.

Note that the printed manuals are also available online in PDF and HTML format, at: http://docs.iplanet.com/docs/manuals/ias.html

For information about	See the following	Shipped with
Late-breaking information about the software and the documentation	Release Notes	Available on the iPlanet Web site, at http://docs.iplanet.com.
Installing iPlanet Application Server and its various components (Web Connector plug-in, iPlanet Application Server Administrator), and configuring the sample applications	Installation Guide	iPlanet Application Server 6.5
Creating iPlanet Application Server 6.5 applications that follow the open Java standards model (Servlets, EJBs, JSPs, and JDBC), by performing the following tasks: Creating the presentation and execution layers of an application Placing discrete pieces of business logic and entities into Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) components Using JDBC to communicate with databases Using iterative testing, debugging, and application fine-tuning procedures to generate applications that execute correctly and quickly	Developer's Guide	iPlanet Application Server 6.5
Administering one or more application servers using iPlanet Application Server Administrator Tool to perform the following tasks: Monitoring and logging server activity Implementing security for iPlanet Application Server Enabling high availability of server resources Configuring web-connector plugin Administering database connectivity Administering transactions Configuring multiple servers Administering multiple-server applications Load balancing servers Managing distributed data synchronization Setting up iPlanet Application Server for development	Administrator's Guide	iPlanet Application Server 6.5
Migrating your applications to the new iPlanet Application Server 6.5 programming model from the Netscape Application Server version 2.1, including a sample migration of an Online Bank application provided with iPlanet Application Server	Migration Guide	iPlanet Application Server 6.5
Using the public classes and interfaces, and their methods in the iPlanet Application Server class library to write Java applications	Server Foundation Class Reference (Java)	iPlanet Application Server 6.5
Using the public classes and interfaces, and their methods in the iPlanet Application Server class library to write C++ applications	Server Foundation Class Reference (C++)	Order separately

About This Guide

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This Performance and Tuning Guide discusses the various features of iPlanet Application Server and how to tune iPlanet Application Server for maximum performance and reliability.

This manual is intended for system administrators, network administrators, evaluators, application server administrators, web developers, and software developers who want to get an understanding of the various tasks and tools available for tuning the performance of iPlanet Application Server.

What You Should Know

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Before you begin, you should already be familiar with the following topics:

• Application Servers

• Client/Server programming model

• Internet and World Wide Web

• Windows NT/2000 or Solaris™ operating systems

• Java programming and J2EE

How This Guide is Organized

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This Guide is organized as follows:

Chapter 1 "About iPlanet Application Server", gives an overview of iPlanet Application Server features, and iPlanet Application Server components.

Chapter 2 "Understanding Tuning and Sizing", provides an insight into sizing, estimating operational requirements, and tunable parameters.

Chapter 3 "Tuning Your Application", provides a comprehensive guide to tuning your applications for maximum performance. Java Coding Guidelines and J2EE Programming Guidelines are discussed in this chapter.

Chapter 4 "Tuning iPlanet Application Server", provides a comprehensive guide to tuning iPlanet Application Server for maximum performance.

Chapter 5 "Tuning the Java Runtime System", provides an insight into memory tuning and Garbage Collector settings.

Chapter 6 "Tuning the Operating System", provides information on Solaris tuning parameters.

Chapter 7 "Tuning Database Servers", discusses various database tuning parameters.

Chapter 8 "General Guidelines for Better Performance", provides guidelines on better coding practices that can improve the performance of your application.

Chapter 9 "Validating Server Performance", provides information on monitoring and validating server performance after tuning.

Chapter 10 "Frequently Asked Questions", is a list of most common question asked regarding iPlanet Application Server tuning.

Documentation Conventions

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File and directory paths are given in Windows format (with backslashes separating directory names). For Unix versions, the directory paths are the same, except forward slashes are used instead of backslashes to separate directories.

This guide uses URLs of the form: http://server.domain/path/file.html, where:

• server is the name of the server where you are running the application.

• domain is your internet domain name.

• path is the directory structure on the server.

• file is an individual filename.

The following table shows the typographic conventions used throughout iPlanet documentation.

Table 1    Typographic Conventions 

Typeface	Meaning	Examples
Monospaced	The names of files, directories, sample code, and code listings; and HTML tags	Open Hello.html file. <HEAD1> creates a top level heading.
Italics	Book titles, variables, other code placeholders, words to be emphasized, and words used in the literal sense	See Chapter 8 of the Performance and Tuning Guide. Enter your UserID. Enter Login in the Name field.
Bold	First appearance of a glossary term in the text	Templates are page outlines.