Sun Fire Tx000 Basic Tuning

Course Overview

The Sun Fire Tx000 Basic Tuning course provides students with the skills to apply basic performance tuning principles to ensure maximum productivity from their UltraSPARC T1 Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS). While this course provides an overview of general system performance and tuning, the foundation of this course is focused on the performance and tuning aspects related to the UlatraSPARC T1 processor and its relevant subsystems. For those students who require more information on general performance and tuning, they should also take the SA-400 Solaris System Performance Management course. The course is designed to introduce performance principles with specific examples, allowing students to manage and solve common performance problems as well as future performance problems that have not specifically been discussed during class. The Sun Fire Tx000 Basic Tuning course includes both lab exercises as well as case studies to reinforce the skills that have been gained during the lecture.

Audience

The course is intended for individuals who need to understand performance issues related to UltraSPARC T1-based systems and who want to more effectively manage resources, understand the performance tools output, hardware structure, operation, and obtain the best possible performance from their systems.

Skills Gained

Upon Completion Of This Course, Students Should Be Able To:

• Define the fundamentals of performance management.
• Define various measurement terminology related to the UltraSPARC T1.
• Monitor performance on a Sun Fire T1000 / T2000 using standard Solaris OS tools.
• View and set various performance related parameters on a Sun Fire T1000 / T2000.
• Identify the difference between processes and threads and the implications of a multi-threaded CPU.
• Monitor and manage CPU scheduling on a Sun Fire T1000 / T2000.
• Monitor and manage CPU caches on a Sun Fire T1000 / T2000.
• Maximize performance for various real world deployments including: Web Server applications, Online Banking, E-commerce, Mail server implementations, and various software applications.

Prerequisites

To succeed fully in this course, students should be able to:

• Install and configure the Solaris OS
• Employ advanced systems administration skills in a networked Solaris OS server environment
• Administer an UltraSPARC T1 based system, such as the Sun Fire T1000 or Sun Fire T2000

Course Outline

Module 1 - Fundamentals of Performance Management

• Describe the principles of performance tuning
• Describe the performance tuning process
• Understand the terms used to describe performance aspects

Module 2 - Using the Solaris OS Monitoring Tools

• Explain the use of monitoring tools provided with the Solaris OS
• Enable system accounting
• View tuning parameters
• Set tuning parameters

Module 3 - Managing Processes, Threads, and CPU Scheduling

• Explain the difference between processes and threads
• Compare the performance of single-threaded and multi-threaded processes
• Monitor processes
• Control and monitor CPUs
• Display and change scheduler parameters
• Change the scheduling behavior of a process
• Compare the Solaris Resource Manager projects and the Fair Share Scheduler (FSS)

Module 4 - Monitoring System Caches

• Define a cache
• Explain the characteristics of a cache
• Analyze cache problems associated with multiple CPUs
• Analyze cache problems associated with cache design

Module 5 - Monitoring and Managing System Memory

• Monitor memory utilization
• Define virtual memory
• Identify paging statistics
• Monitor swapping
• Identify the memory requirements of an application

Module 6 - Disk and Network Tuning

• Monitor disk performance
• Perform basic disk tuning
• Monitor network performance
• Peform basic network tuning

Follow Up Courses

Before:

• Network Administration for the Solaris 9 Operating System (SA-399)
• Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 9 Operating System (SA-299)
• Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 10 Operating System (SA-202-S10)
• Advanced System Administration for the Solaris 10 Operating System on x86 Based System (SA-203-S10)
• Network Administration for the Solaris 10 Operating System (SA-300-S10)

After:

• Introduction to Crash Dump Analysis and the SunOS Kernel (ST-375)
• Solaris System Performance Management (SA-400)