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Oracle Performance Tuning and Optimization
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Edward Whalen
ISBN: 067230886x
Publication Date: 04/01/96

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UNIX

The UNIX operating system is probably the most configurable of the clients described in this chapter. Even so, there is not very much you can configure to support client applications. As with the other OSes described in this chapter, with UNIX, it is important to make sure that you have the proper resources to run your applications.

The UNIX operating system requires more resources than Windows or Windows for Workgroups. The resources required to effectively run UNIX are somewhere between the resources required for Windows 95 and Windows NT. A PC UNIX system such as UnixWare or SCO UNIX needs a minimum of 16M of RAM and provides excellent performance with 32M of RAM.

Memory

As with the other operating systems described in this chapter, probably the most important factor with UNIX is the availability of memory. You should eliminate unnecessary processes and reduce other overhead. For the client OS, file-system buffers can be slightly reduced to allow for more user memory. Because reducing file-system buffers may slow down program loading, test this change carefully.

With the UNIX operating system, you can monitor memory usage by using sar or any of the graphical monitoring tools that may come with your OS.

Network

As you must do for the other systems described in this chapter, you should remove any unnecessary UNIX network protocols to reduce memory and CPU overhead. Monitor the network and increase stream resources if necessary. By reducing network overhead, you can increase the application’s performance.

Review of UNIX

As with all the operating environments described in this chapter, it is important to monitor memory use with UNIX. If memory is a problem, try to reduce overhead and system memory consumption as much as possible. With any OS, you should make sure that your system has sufficient resources to run your application.

Hardware

Throughout this chapter, the recurring theme has been the availability of system memory. With client applications, the performance of the system is determined by three main factors. These factors, in order of importance, are as follows:

1.  The application. If the application is inefficient or poorly written, there is nothing you can do to “tune” around this. A well-written application is the starting point in an optimized system.
2.  System memory. The performance of a well-written and optimized application can be severely degraded by a lack of memory. If the application cannot reside in physical memory, the system will swap, which severely degrades performance.
3.  CPU power. When you have optimized the application and made sure that there is enough memory, the application will run as fast as the CPU can process it. This is the ideal situation.

If you have sufficient resources and the application is optimized, your application should run as fast as the CPU can process it. When this is the case, the only way to run faster is to upgrade your processing power.

When upgrading computer resources, many people mistakenly upgrade their CPU. Memory is the prime cause of performance bottlenecks. If you are having client performance problems, check the system memory first. If you don’t have sufficient memory resources, a faster CPU cannot improve performance.

Summary

This chapter looked at the client system from the perspectives of the OS and hardware. You have seen that system resources can be a problem if they are not sufficient for the required task; you also learned about some upgrade alternatives. When upgrading your system, consider upgrading your software and application as well as your hardware.

If you upgrade to a 32-bit operating system with additional features, you not only achieve a more robust system, you reap other benefits of a newer OS. Keep in mind, however, that you may have to increase the amount of memory in your system to support the new OS.

If you upgrade your client hardware, make sure that you upgrade the correct components. Upgrading a CPU in a system with a memory bottleneck will not improve performance. You may find that with a little more memory, system performance is greatly improved.


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