This is an advanced course for system administrators, system engineers, and system support individuals.

• Distinguish between system and application performance constraints
• Describe the performance implications of each subsystem by understanding, in general terms, how the subsystem works
• Identify and eliminate (or minimize) various software and hardware performance constraints using AIX 5L tools and standard UNIX tools
• List various sources of information and support for capacity planning, system assurance, performance analysis and tuning

Performance analysis and tuning overview

• describe performance terminology
• explain performance components
• describe the performance tuning process
• explain performance metrics
• list tools available for analysis and tuning

Data Collection

• distinguish between a performance and a functional problem
• provide a clear description of a performance problem
• install the PerfPMR tool
• collect performance data using PerfPMR
• describe the use of topas and nmon performance monitoring tools.

Monitoring, analyzing and tuning Central Processing Unit (CPU) usage

• explain processes and threads
• explain how priorities and scheduling work
• use the output of vmstat, sar, ps, topas, and tprof to determine symptoms of a CPU bottleneck
• use schedo options to tune CPU scheduling
• enable/disable simultaneous multi-threading (SMT)

Virtual memory performance monitoring and tuning

• explain basic virtual memory concepts and what issues affect performance
• explain how to analyze memory usage
• explain page replacement
• analyze and tune page replacement
• identify memory leaks
• use Virtual Memory Management (VMM) monitoring and tuning tools

Physical and logical volume performance

• identify factors related to physical and logical volume performance
• use performance tools to identify I/O bottlenecks
• configure physical disks and adapters for optimal performance
• configure logical volumes for optimal performance

File system performance monitoring and tuning

• list characteristics of the file system that apply to performance
• describe how file fragmentation affects disk I/O performance
• use the filemon tool to evaluate file system performance
• tune asynchronous I/O, synchronous I/O and Journaled File System (JFS) log
• tune direct I/O and release-behind
• tune page read-ahead and write-behind
• identify resource bottlenecks

Network performance

• list the factors and system parameters that affect network performance
• measure network throughput and response time
• use netstat to monitor network statistics
• use no, chdev, ifconfig, and smit to tune network performance

NFS performance

• define the basic NFS concepts
• list the differences between NFS V2, V3 and V4
• tune NFS servers
• tune NFS clients

Performance Management Methodology

• list the steps to approach performance analysis
• describe the distinct areas of performance that need to be investigated and how to go about monitoring those areas
• use tools that will aid with performance monitoring and tuning on partitioned system

You should complete:

• AIX System Administration I : Implementation (AU140) or (Q1314)
• AIX System Administration II : Problem Determination (AU160) or (Q1316) or (QT010)
• AIX 5L TCP/IP I: Configuration (AU070) or (Q1307)

or have equivalent experience (at least six months)

You should also be able to:

• Manage AIX physical and logical storage
• Manage networking configurations from an application server viewpoint.
• Utilize additional subsystems including cron to schedule system tasks and accounting to analyze system activity
• Pull together many of the topics learned in previous courses to start addressing real-life system administrator issues