Linux Performance Tuning

Course details

DevOps pros, system admins, and software developers all benefit from knowing how to determine bottlenecks, find resource usage information, and improve the performance of Linux systems. Linux performance tuning makes sure you're getting the most from your machines. This training course demonstrates a variety of tools and techniques to help you diagnose and repair problems related to resource usage and allocation. Learn how to identify bottlenecks in memory, CPU, and disk, by using tools such as perf, sar, top, htop, atop, Performance Co-Pilot, and many more. Explore the proc filesystem, and concepts such as swapping, paging, and page faults. Instructor Kevin Dankwardt also discusses Linux process scheduling, and relates topics to objectives covered by the Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Performance Tuning exam (EX442).

Learning objectives
Timing techniques
Packages for performance
Identifying and optimizing CPU bottlenecks
Finding memory bottlenecks
Diagnosing disk bottlenecks

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Welcome
02 - What you should know

1. Performance Overview

03 - What do we mean by performance
04 - Timing techniques
05 - Timing techniques solution
06 - The proc filesystem
07 - Packages for performance
08 - Performance Co-Pilot and Tuna
09 - SystemTap and Berkeley Packet Filter

2. CPU Bottlenecks

10 - top for CPU usage
11 - sar for CPU
12 - proc cpuinfo
13 - Scheduling - nice, priorities, and process classes
14 - Throughput vs. response time
15 - The Linux kernel and responsiveness

3. Memory Bottlenecks

16 - What is a memory leak
17 - proc meminfo, free, and swap space
18 - top and htop for memory usage
19 - CPU caches and page caches
20 - Page sizes and page faults
21 - Challenge - Finding memory bottlenecks
22 - Solution - Finding memory bottlenecks

4. Disk Bottlenecks

23 - Hard disks and SSD behavior
24 - sar and atop tools and disk utilization
25 - Filesystem types and performance
26 - Challenge - Disk bottlenecks
27 - Solution - Disk bottlenecks

Conclusion

28 - Next steps

Linux Performance Tuning

Authors

Kevin Dankwardt