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Identify Bottlenecks among System Resources

The goal of adjusting system resource usage is to satisfy the user throughput and response times required in your business. You can optimize system performance in a client/server (C/S) environment by overcoming potential bottlenecks of the four components of your server machine environment shown in the following table:

Component

Bottleneck

CPU

More requests are made than can be satisfied within a given timeframe

Memory

It is insufficient to accommodate processing requirements, resulting in memory paging and swapping

Disk I/O

The number of requested read/write operations exceed capacity

Network

The volume of traffic exceeds capacity and causes collisions

Because these components interact with each other, improving one may have a positive affect on the others. For example, when you add needed memory, you can expect excessive CPU paging and swapping to stop. On the other hand, making an improvement in one area may cause a bottleneck to develop in another area. For example, adding buffers improves disk I/O but decreases available memory. Ideally, tuning should result in a high degree of resource utilization without overtaxing any one of the individual components. The key is to get all of these interdependent components to work together. You may find it beneficial to consult other groups that have similar configurations to yours about their use of CPU, memory, disk, and network.