As stated above, system performance monitoring is normally done
in response to a performance problem. Either the system is running
too slowly, or programs (and sometimes even the entire system) fail
to run at all. In either case, performance monitoring is normally
done as the first and last steps of a three-step process:
-
Monitoring to identify the nature and scope of the resource
shortages that are causing the performance problems
-
The data produced from monitoring is analyzed and a course of
action (normally performance tuning and/or the procurement of
additional hardware) is taken to resolve the problem
-
Monitoring to ensure that the performance problem has been
resolved
Because of this, performance monitoring tends to be relatively
short-lived in duration and more detailed in scope.
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Note |
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System performance monitoring is often an iterative process,
with these steps being repeated several times to arrive at the best
possible system performance. The primary reason for this is that
system resources and their utilization tend to be highly
interrelated, meaning that often the elimination of one resource
bottleneck uncovers another one.
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