Home > Articles > Certification > Other IT

Solaris 9 System Monitoring and Tuning

Tracking down a performance problem on a Sun system takes a great deal of detective work. This article teaches how to utilize the tools that come standard in the Solaris 9 operating environment instead of spending a bundle on third-party apps.
This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

As system administrator, it's your job to ensure that the systems you manage are operating at optimum performance levels. Because computer systems are frequently crucial to maintaining the profitability of companies, corporate management is concerned about all computer systems performing as intended. One of the most important tasks you will perform, from a job security point of view, is providing regular reports on the health of your systems to your superiors. It's excellent job security to show that you are maintaining the systems properly and that everything is operating efficiently. After all, that's what your job boils down to.

Sometimes performance bottlenecks do more than just impact response time. Sometimes they can bring the systems down completely. The costs can be staggering. For example, I once worked at a food distributor that estimated that a down system cost them $1 million per hour. The $5 billion company would be out of business if downtime went beyond 2 days. Not to mention what it would do to their stock price. Managed performance is easily equated with money saved.

Tracking down a performance problem on a Sun system takes a great deal of detective work. You need to see the problem before users notice it. It's unacceptable to find out a performance problem from a user or, worse yet, from your manager. You need to begin tracking performance problems by reviewing all of the clues you are able to gather from the various monitoring utilities available in Solaris.

Aside from purchasing a third-party performance-monitoring package for several thousand dollars, I'm going to show you how to utilize the tools that come standard in the Solaris 9 operating environment.

I've always considered UNIX performance monitoring as sort of a "black art." There's lots of smoke and mirrors to look behind, and nothing is ever black and white. As you track performance, you are gathering system activity data on all aspects of the hardware and operating system, and you must determine when the data you've compiled points to a performance problem. Tracing a bottleneck often involves many days of gathering data and many more hours of analyzing the data. What might appear to be the cause of the bottleneck initially might be a symptom of yet another problem that is not quite so obvious.

In this chapter, I'll introduce various methods of gathering system activity data from a Solaris system. Unfortunately, interpreting this data comes more from experience than from anything I can teach you in this book. There are many variables involved. For example, a CPU might show 90% utilization, but this doesn't necessarily mean that the CPU is overloaded and is contributing to the slow performance of a system. Actually, 90% CPU utilization could be the sign of a very healthy, well-balanced system. On another system, memory utilization could be at 100%, and looking at the data could indicate that this is the cause of the performance problem when actually it's an inefficient database query that's causing the system to work extra hard.

Being Proactive

I can't over emphasize the importance of being proactive in monitoring your system's performance from the first day it is installed. The data that is gathered early on, before the system gets loaded down with users, will allow you to set the mark for how the system should be performing. These are the "best-case" figures that you can measure your system's future performance against. Now, as you gather system activity data on a loaded system, you'll have a baseline to compare it against.

Every time you make a change, carefully watch how the change impacts your system's performance. If you wait until users are complaining and performance is severely degraded, you'll have a great deal of backtracking to do before finding the bottleneck that caused this issue to arise. Was it a change made to the kernel? Was a patch recently installed? Was it a sudden increase in user activity? Is there a hardware malfunction?

InformIT Promotional Mailings & Special Offers

I would like to receive exclusive offers and hear about products from InformIT and its family of brands. I can unsubscribe at any time.

Overview


Pearson Education, Inc., 221 River Street, Hoboken, New Jersey 07030, (Pearson) presents this site to provide information about products and services that can be purchased through this site.

This privacy notice provides an overview of our commitment to privacy and describes how we collect, protect, use and share personal information collected through this site. Please note that other Pearson websites and online products and services have their own separate privacy policies.

Collection and Use of Information


To conduct business and deliver products and services, Pearson collects and uses personal information in several ways in connection with this site, including:

Questions and Inquiries

For inquiries and questions, we collect the inquiry or question, together with name, contact details (email address, phone number and mailing address) and any other additional information voluntarily submitted to us through a Contact Us form or an email. We use this information to address the inquiry and respond to the question.

Online Store

For orders and purchases placed through our online store on this site, we collect order details, name, institution name and address (if applicable), email address, phone number, shipping and billing addresses, credit/debit card information, shipping options and any instructions. We use this information to complete transactions, fulfill orders, communicate with individuals placing orders or visiting the online store, and for related purposes.

Surveys

Pearson may offer opportunities to provide feedback or participate in surveys, including surveys evaluating Pearson products, services or sites. Participation is voluntary. Pearson collects information requested in the survey questions and uses the information to evaluate, support, maintain and improve products, services or sites, develop new products and services, conduct educational research and for other purposes specified in the survey.

Contests and Drawings

Occasionally, we may sponsor a contest or drawing. Participation is optional. Pearson collects name, contact information and other information specified on the entry form for the contest or drawing to conduct the contest or drawing. Pearson may collect additional personal information from the winners of a contest or drawing in order to award the prize and for tax reporting purposes, as required by law.

Newsletters

If you have elected to receive email newsletters or promotional mailings and special offers but want to unsubscribe, simply email information@informit.com.

Service Announcements

On rare occasions it is necessary to send out a strictly service related announcement. For instance, if our service is temporarily suspended for maintenance we might send users an email. Generally, users may not opt-out of these communications, though they can deactivate their account information. However, these communications are not promotional in nature.

Customer Service

We communicate with users on a regular basis to provide requested services and in regard to issues relating to their account we reply via email or phone in accordance with the users' wishes when a user submits their information through our Contact Us form.

Other Collection and Use of Information


Application and System Logs

Pearson automatically collects log data to help ensure the delivery, availability and security of this site. Log data may include technical information about how a user or visitor connected to this site, such as browser type, type of computer/device, operating system, internet service provider and IP address. We use this information for support purposes and to monitor the health of the site, identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents and appropriately scale computing resources.

Web Analytics

Pearson may use third party web trend analytical services, including Google Analytics, to collect visitor information, such as IP addresses, browser types, referring pages, pages visited and time spent on a particular site. While these analytical services collect and report information on an anonymous basis, they may use cookies to gather web trend information. The information gathered may enable Pearson (but not the third party web trend services) to link information with application and system log data. Pearson uses this information for system administration and to identify problems, improve service, detect unauthorized access and fraudulent activity, prevent and respond to security incidents, appropriately scale computing resources and otherwise support and deliver this site and its services.

Cookies and Related Technologies

This site uses cookies and similar technologies to personalize content, measure traffic patterns, control security, track use and access of information on this site, and provide interest-based messages and advertising. Users can manage and block the use of cookies through their browser. Disabling or blocking certain cookies may limit the functionality of this site.

Do Not Track

This site currently does not respond to Do Not Track signals.

Security


Pearson uses appropriate physical, administrative and technical security measures to protect personal information from unauthorized access, use and disclosure.

Children


This site is not directed to children under the age of 13.

Marketing


Pearson may send or direct marketing communications to users, provided that

  • Pearson will not use personal information collected or processed as a K-12 school service provider for the purpose of directed or targeted advertising.
  • Such marketing is consistent with applicable law and Pearson's legal obligations.
  • Pearson will not knowingly direct or send marketing communications to an individual who has expressed a preference not to receive marketing.
  • Where required by applicable law, express or implied consent to marketing exists and has not been withdrawn.

Pearson may provide personal information to a third party service provider on a restricted basis to provide marketing solely on behalf of Pearson or an affiliate or customer for whom Pearson is a service provider. Marketing preferences may be changed at any time.

Correcting/Updating Personal Information


If a user's personally identifiable information changes (such as your postal address or email address), we provide a way to correct or update that user's personal data provided to us. This can be done on the Account page. If a user no longer desires our service and desires to delete his or her account, please contact us at customer-service@informit.com and we will process the deletion of a user's account.

Choice/Opt-out


Users can always make an informed choice as to whether they should proceed with certain services offered by InformIT. If you choose to remove yourself from our mailing list(s) simply visit the following page and uncheck any communication you no longer want to receive: www.informit.com/u.aspx.

Sale of Personal Information


Pearson does not rent or sell personal information in exchange for any payment of money.

While Pearson does not sell personal information, as defined in Nevada law, Nevada residents may email a request for no sale of their personal information to NevadaDesignatedRequest@pearson.com.

Supplemental Privacy Statement for California Residents


California residents should read our Supplemental privacy statement for California residents in conjunction with this Privacy Notice. The Supplemental privacy statement for California residents explains Pearson's commitment to comply with California law and applies to personal information of California residents collected in connection with this site and the Services.

Sharing and Disclosure


Pearson may disclose personal information, as follows:

  • As required by law.
  • With the consent of the individual (or their parent, if the individual is a minor)
  • In response to a subpoena, court order or legal process, to the extent permitted or required by law
  • To protect the security and safety of individuals, data, assets and systems, consistent with applicable law
  • In connection the sale, joint venture or other transfer of some or all of its company or assets, subject to the provisions of this Privacy Notice
  • To investigate or address actual or suspected fraud or other illegal activities
  • To exercise its legal rights, including enforcement of the Terms of Use for this site or another contract
  • To affiliated Pearson companies and other companies and organizations who perform work for Pearson and are obligated to protect the privacy of personal information consistent with this Privacy Notice
  • To a school, organization, company or government agency, where Pearson collects or processes the personal information in a school setting or on behalf of such organization, company or government agency.

Links


This web site contains links to other sites. Please be aware that we are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects Personal Information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this web site.

Requests and Contact


Please contact us about this Privacy Notice or if you have any requests or questions relating to the privacy of your personal information.

Changes to this Privacy Notice


We may revise this Privacy Notice through an updated posting. We will identify the effective date of the revision in the posting. Often, updates are made to provide greater clarity or to comply with changes in regulatory requirements. If the updates involve material changes to the collection, protection, use or disclosure of Personal Information, Pearson will provide notice of the change through a conspicuous notice on this site or other appropriate way. Continued use of the site after the effective date of a posted revision evidences acceptance. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about the Privacy Notice or any objection to any revisions.

Last Update: November 17, 2020