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Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud
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The Complete Guide to Optimizing Systems Performance Written by the winner of the 2013 LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement in System Administration
Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tool ...more
Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tool ...more
Paperback, 735 pages
Published
October 26th 2013
by Prentice Hall
(first published September 27th 2013)
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This isn't a book, so much as it is a reference manual or an appendix. It's nearly 800 pages of dense, low-level discussions of performance issues related to the CPU, memory, hard drive, OS, and so on. The writing is very structured, repetitive, and dry and resembles a list of facts more than prose. If you have a specific performance issue and need to know how to, say, use DTrace to diagnose an issue with a memory leak, this book is perfect. If you're looking for something you can read cover to
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Whenever I watch Netflix movies from different locations, on different networks, and via different devices without any serious performance problems, I think about this book. I just can't help it. Guess why?
Brendan Gregg, also known as The Server Whisperer, among other things, wrote one of the most pragmatic and comprehensive books on Unix and Linux performance engineering. If you're in any way seriously involved with benchmarking, tuning, and analyzing GNU/Linux or Unix based systems in the last ...more
Brendan Gregg, also known as The Server Whisperer, among other things, wrote one of the most pragmatic and comprehensive books on Unix and Linux performance engineering. If you're in any way seriously involved with benchmarking, tuning, and analyzing GNU/Linux or Unix based systems in the last ...more
Highly recommended!
Great book on debugging production systems. It serves a comprehensive, but simple, mental model for how systems work, and solid methodologies to look at each component. Especially the USE-method: looking at each system component for utilization, saturation, and errors: network, disk, cpu, memory, mutexes, ... Most of the time people use the 'streetlight' method, going through random tools they know. Best illustrated in its absurdity by the parable of the drunk man who was looking for his keys in
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Great book for practical system performance troubleshooting.
Do not let the size daunts you however. Chapters are self-contained, as the author understands that the book might be read under pressure, and contain useful exercises at the end.
What really makes this book stands out, is not the top-notch technical writing or abundance of useful one-liners, is the fact that the author moves forward and suggests a methodology for troubleshooting and performance analysis, as opposed to the ad-hoc methods of the past (or best case scenario a checklist and $DEITY ...more
What really makes this book stands out, is not the top-notch technical writing or abundance of useful one-liners, is the fact that the author moves forward and suggests a methodology for troubleshooting and performance analysis, as opposed to the ad-hoc methods of the past (or best case scenario a checklist and $DEITY ...more
Great book for any Linux Operations guys out there to test and determine metrics for your infrastructure.
I bought and started to read this book to prepare myself for a job interview. Really recommendable.
Ps: I finally got the job :)
Ps: I finally got the job :)
Brendan is probably the de-facto authority in the performance world. Brendan walks through the Linus Kernel internals and covers the performance of each areas like Memory, CPU, File Systems, Disks, Networks. His methodologies for analyzing performance problems are must read for SREs and performance engineers. The are plethora of tools that Brendan contributed in creating for Linux performance troubleshooting. I love the easy to follow and structured approach of Brendan's writing. Specifically th
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Very very well written book. I didn't actually read it front to back, I read the first 4 chapters which covers the foundation, chapter 5 which covers application-level performance, and the last 3 chapters on cloud and multi-tenant performance, benchmarking, and a case study. The middle chapters dive into other specific topics like CPU, memory, file systems, etc. that I will reference on an as-needed basis.
Overall very well written, communicates concepts clearly, and reifies a lot of things that ...more
Overall very well written, communicates concepts clearly, and reifies a lot of things that ...more
Absolutely amazing book on performance measurement. Contains a lot of theory how to measure performance (starting from "what performance really is" - and it is not so obvious) to example how to drill down. This books contains a lot of practical examples on performance issues investigation. Looks slightly outdated (tap, solaris, DTrace) but it is really worth reading for admins and every person who cares about performance.
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Though at risk of being a tad ranty about how Solaris is better than linux, Brendan Gregg's detail and understanding of Kernel development and performance is comprehensive and both introduces the topic and then guides the reader through how to measure it. It's a must-read for Linux developers.
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The book addresses two different questions:
1. How to analyze systems performance? (Methodology)
2. How to use tools to achieve these goals? (Tools)
The first question is thoroughly answered in the book. However, the second question is pretty outdated for Linux.
1. How to analyze systems performance? (Methodology)
2. How to use tools to achieve these goals? (Tools)
The first question is thoroughly answered in the book. However, the second question is pretty outdated for Linux.
Grail of performance issues/improvements.
Brings down performance analysis to actual commands and methodologies you can directly use. Quite nice read.
Good to skim through to learn about what is possible and out there, but it's more like a reference book to check when needed with a specific performance problem.
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An in-depth look at modern Linux introspection, functioning, tools and metrics.
The USE method is very helpful for an SRE.
The USE method is very helpful for an SRE.
When investigating a CPU issue, I found that I had to dive much deeper than the details provided by this book. It's a good starting point though. Brendan Gregg is a legend.
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It is abstract and not useful for modern performance issues
The Bible of following topic
One of my most favourite everything-reference when I need to do system benchmark/trouble-shooting. This book covers almost all aspects of low-level stuff from kernel to network-protocol, or file system, disk system. Highly recommended.
This book is nightmarishly good. I figured it would take months to slog through it, but was able to in 4 months. I was a bit nutty, since I took handwritten notes.
Book I wanted to have when I first started my career. All the stuff in OS classes and things gleaned from experience wrapped up in one, with exercises at chapter's end to test your knowledge, well-written text, graphics that accurately capture and describe topics and a mild amount of human humour injected where appropriate.
This is a H ...more
Book I wanted to have when I first started my career. All the stuff in OS classes and things gleaned from experience wrapped up in one, with exercises at chapter's end to test your knowledge, well-written text, graphics that accurately capture and describe topics and a mild amount of human humour injected where appropriate.
This is a H ...more
This book details how to approach software performance issues. It explains how to observe, measure and visualise what is happening in the OS and beyond (only on the Linux and Solaris platforms). I don't think the book reads very well from cover to cover, but I did devour the first chapters that explain the concepts and methodologies, as well as the final the case study. To my opinion, the rest seems more of a reference to consult when faced with a particular performance issue as they covers CPU,
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A very good introduction into systems performance. This book touches system's performance
all the way from bottom(hardware) to up(to the application level). The systematic approach
taken in each chapter will teach principles and methods of system performance along with the tools like DTrace. It shows how to use tools on the real world cases giving a solid introduction on the "why" part of performance issue.
I hope the future edition will include more modern tools for Linux like eBPF. Otherwise, it' ...more
all the way from bottom(hardware) to up(to the application level). The systematic approach
taken in each chapter will teach principles and methods of system performance along with the tools like DTrace. It shows how to use tools on the real world cases giving a solid introduction on the "why" part of performance issue.
I hope the future edition will include more modern tools for Linux like eBPF. Otherwise, it' ...more
A brilliant book. Gregg takes a microscope to the operating system and shows what goes on under the hood. One of the best computer science books I have ever read.
Note: get the dead tree book or the pdf. Epub formatting is dreadful.
Note: get the dead tree book or the pdf. Epub formatting is dreadful.
My favorite book ever. I haven't read a book better than this on the topic of system performance. Brendan is definitely one of the foremost Engineers in the world. This should be a mandatory reading for everyone willing to become a performance engineer. Can't recommend this book highly enough.
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Good introductory book for computer architecture from HW/SW perspective.
Good reference book for performance monitoring.
Good reference book for performance monitoring.
Excellent all-round intro how to look into performance issues
One of must-read books for systems people.
Covers methodologies ask and tools for performance analysis as well as explains systems internals.
Covers methodologies ask and tools for performance analysis as well as explains systems internals.
Great book, provides a wide view of systems performance. Must read for anyone interested in the subject.
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“Beyond 60% utilization, the average response time doubles. By 80%, it has tripled. As disk I/O latency is often the bounding resource for an application, increasing the average latency by double or higher can have a significant negative effect on application performance. This is why disk utilization can become a problem well before it reaches 100%, as it is a queueing system where requests (typically) cannot be interrupted and must wait their turn.”
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