Server Performance Tuning and Reports

Performance tuning of a server depends heavily on the nature of applications on the server and its configuration parameters

This can be an exhaustive task. The basic rule of optimization is "not to fix, if its not broken". Most of the applications are already designed to perform most efficiently without much tweaks. Tuning is often done by making trade-offs and enabling those features possibly unused, which would enhance the performance.

Performance tuning does not necessarily mean optimizing for speed. The goal is to utilize the system resources in an optimum manner. If a specific application is tuned for maximum speed, but if this throttles the entire server resources to attain such speed, the whole exercise would be in vain. For a given system, it is important to know where the tuning would be effective. Finding such areas can be tricky even with benchmark programs, as they do not give much information other than an overview of performance. Hence, it often requires in-depth information about the server, website and services to determine the best ways to optimize.

Tips for performance tuning :

Apache [Courtesy Apache.org]

Apache is a general webserver, which is designed to be correct first, and fast second. Even so, its performance is quite satisfactory. Most sites have less than 10Mbits of outgoing bandwidth, which Apache can fill using only a low end Pentium-based webserver. In practice, sites with more bandwidth require more than one machine to fill the bandwidth due to other constraints (such as CGI or database transaction overhead).

For these reasons, the development focus has been mostly on correctness and configurability.

Hardware : The single biggest hardware issue affecting webserver performance is RAM. The webserver should never have to swap, as swapping increases the latency of each request and can result in much slower connections. ** This causes the users to hit stop and reload, further increasing the load **. Swapping process also increases the load on the server in general. So it is essential for Apache to have enough RAM for functioning efficiently. Rest of the hardware is not that much of importance. A fast CPU available in the market and a good network card is good enough for apache to work with ease. Harddisk type is also of not great concern, as any good disk would serve the purpose.

Configuration : **You should, control the MaxClients setting so that your server does not spawn so many children it starts swapping. The procedure for doing this is simple: determine the size of your average Apache process, by looking at your process list via a tool such as top, and divide this into your total available memory, leaving some room for other processes.**