Analyzing Operating System Performance

Abstract

Solving database performance issues sometimes requires the use of operating system (OS) utilities. These tools often provide information that can help isolate database performance problems. Consider the following situations:

• You’re running multiple databases and multiple applications on one server and want to use OS utilities to identify which database (and corresponding process) is consuming the most operating system resources. This approach is invaluable when one database application is consuming resources to the point of causing other databases on the box to perform poorly.

• You need to verify if the database server is adequately sized for current application workload in terms of CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network bandwidth.

• An analysis is needed to determine at what point the server will not be able to handle larger (future) workloads.

• You’ve used database tools to identify system bottlenecks and want to double-check the analysis via operating system tools.