Hey everyone! I'm on a quest to find resources, preferably courses or books, that cover system optimization for Linux. It feels like hunting for a needle in a haystack since I can only find one book titled "Systems Performance, 2nd Edition" by Brendan Gregg. If you have any recommendations for additional resources or good reads on this topic, I'd really appreciate it!
5 Answers
It's essential to clarify your optimization goals! For instance, optimizing for network throughput is a different game than boosting storage latency or ensuring fair scheduling. Generally, unless you're pushing extreme limits, like 100GBit/s networks, optimizing low-level settings might not yield significant gains. A large part of inefficiency comes from poorly written code, especially in languages like PHP!
Haha, right? While PHP developers get their fair share of the blame, I think .NET devs are a big part of the performance issues we see today.
You might want to check out [this tuning guide from SUSE](https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP6/html/SLES-all/book-tuning.html). It's pretty handy!
Brendan Gregg's book is a gem! Also, remember there are various optimization aspects to consider: single-thread vs multi-threaded apps, and trade-offs between throughput and latency. A good starting point is looking into the 'tuned' tool, which can help adjust kernel settings for you. Just be clear on what specific performance goals you have—many folks just want to increase their CPU idle percentages from 90% to 99%!
If you’re interested in formal training, check out this course on Red Hat’s performance tuning [here](https://www.redhat.com/en/services/training/rh442-red-hat-enterprise-performance-tuning). If it's too pricey, looking at the course outline could still provide useful insights as you work through the official documentation.
System optimization can cover various aspects such as CPU optimization, memory management, storage performance, and network optimization. It's a broad topic that includes tuning kernel parameters too. Just focus on the juicy details!
I can relate! In my 30-year career in system admin, I've only had to pin a process to specific cores once to avoid inter-socket latency during a 40GBit/s traffic inspection. Figuring out where to run processes can sometimes be critical!