Book: Tuning IBM System x Servers for Performance

IBM Redbooks department released a huge (1104 pages) and highly interesting book about performance tuning on System x servers. It includes two chapters dedicated to VMware ESX Server:

This IBM Redbook describes what you can do to improve and maximize the performance of your business server applications running on IBM System x hardware and either Windows, Linux, or ESX Server operating systems. It describes how to improve the performance of the System x hardware, the operating system, and specific server applications.

The book is divided into five parts. Part 1 explains the technology implemented in the major subsystems in System x servers and shows what settings can be selected or adjusted to obtain the best performance. Part 2 describes the performance aspects of the operating systems: Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and VMware ESX Server.

Part 3 introduces the performance monitoring tools that are available to users of System x servers. Part 4 shows you how to analyze your system to find performance bottlenecks and what to do to eliminate them. Part 5 examines specific performance characteristics of specific server applications.

This book is targeted at people who configure Intel and AMD processor-based servers running Windows, Linux or ESX Server and seek to maximize performance. Some knowledge of servers is required. Skills in performance tuning are not assumed.

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1 – Introduction to this IBM Redbook
  • Chapter 2 – Understanding server types
  • Chapter 3 – Introduction to hardware technology
  • Chapter 4 – Processors and cache subsystem
  • Chapter 5 – Virtualization hardware assists
  • Chapter 6 – PCI bus subsystem
  • Chapter 7 – Chipset architecture
  • Chapter 8 – Memory subsystem
  • Chapter 9 – Disk subsystem
  • Chapter 10 – Network subsystem
  • Chapter 11 – Microsoft Windows Server
  • Chapter 12 – Linux
  • Chapter 13 – VMware ESX Server
  • Chapter 14 – Windows tools
  • Chapter 15 – Linux tools
  • Chapter 16 – ESX Server tools
  • Chapter 17 – Capacity Manager
  • Chapter 18 – Spotting a bottleneck
  • Chapter 19 – Analyzing bottlenecks for servers running Windows
  • Chapter 20 – Analyzing bottlenecks for servers that are running Linux
  • Chapter 21 – Case studies
  • Chapter 22 – File and print servers
  • Chapter 23 – Lotus Domino
  • Chapter 24 – Microsoft Exchange Server
  • Chapter 25 – IBM DB2 Universal Database
  • Chapter 26 – Microsoft SQL Server
  • Chapter 27 – Oracle
  • Chapter 28 – Microsoft Windows Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server
  • Chapter 29 – Microsoft Internet Information Services

Definitively a must-read: download it here.