Systems Performance
Enterprise and the Cloud
by Brendan Gregg · first published 2013
70% recommend30% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Pragmatic guide to performance analysis: a structured methodology chapter, coverage of CPU, disk and memory, and tracing tools like DTrace and eBPF. Suits performance engineers and working developers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The Complete Guide to Optimizing Systems Performance Written by the winner of the 2013 LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement in System Administration Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tools, and metrics for analyzing and tuning even the most complex environments. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud focuses on Linux® and Unix® performance, while illuminating performance issues that are releva
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If you want more from Brendan Gregg on analyzing performance, be sure to check out his book, Systems Performance: http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0133390098
on “Linux Performance Analysis” ↗…google handles its infrastructure. - Grab Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment and plow through it as much as you can [2]. *Do the exercises*. - Read at least the CPU, disk and memory parts of Systems Performance by Brendan Gregg [3] I strongly recommend Brendan Gregg's by due to the troubleshooting sections. I find them very useful. Also note that it is not that easy to get an interview just by sending your…
on “Ask HN: SRE, former fullstack, how to move to a Google scale job?” ↗For a comprehensive review of performance engineering, I’d suggest Brendan Gregg’s book, Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud, now in its second edition. Chapter 2, “Methodologies,” describes several methods—mental frameworks, if you like—for analyzing and resolving performance problems.
on “Ask HN: Question from self-taugh developer, my app is slow. What do I do now?” ↗…learned were from network engineering books and a couple hardware design classes I took. Re: principles around performance analysis and diagnostics, Brendan Gregg is a name you should look up. His book on systems performance is a tremendous resource in both principles and methodology. Even though it's not focused on coding specifically, the same principles apply.
on “Why Is C Faster Than Java (2009)” ↗There are two excellent books by Brendan Gregg which can teach you about eBPF: 1: Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud, 2nd Edition <https://brendangregg.com/systems-performance-2nd-edition-boo...> 2: BPF Performance Tools <https://brendangregg.com/bpf-performance-tools-book.html> Contrary…
on “DTrace-on-Windows” ↗…about the very topics you care about. (Also, Jens Axboe wrote a long and great explanation why blk-mq was necessary, which you should seek out. He did the same for io_uring) I highly recommend Gregg's Systems Performance (2nd edition came out in 2020). While the book is focused on performance rather than development, Gregg does a great job explaining a huge number of concepts without going too deep, specifically related…
on “Ask HN: What are some good resources for learning about low level disk/file IO?” ↗Gregg's book "Systems Performance" was a real game changer for me. Helped me understand how Linux internals and system performance inter-relate. I love how he's able to take these pretty esoteric concepts and flesh them out. Truly…
on “Tuning Linux for Performance” ↗Systems performance from Brendan Gregg. Thank me later.
on “What are the best books or resources on SRE automation that are also practical?” ↗…utilize strace/ltrace/ftrace/dtrace/ktap/systemtap/perf/sysdig/whatever (If interested in the actual analysis/engineering side of performance, I recommend following Bredan Gregg's blog and buying his systems performance book - http://brendangregg.com/ )
on “One-stop performance analysis using atop” ↗…as a side note, does anyone know why are the Amazon categories so bad? http://prntscr.com/dr3itj This book is classified in "javascript". You might also find this book helpful https://www.amazon.com/Systems-Performance-Enterprise-Brenda... since it's essentially about how to perf measure, and debug computers in the cloud which is the annoying part of distributed systems. Also you should keep in mind that there are…
on “Ask HN: Recommendations for a book on Distributed Systems?” ↗Systems Performance by Brendan Gregg. It is an amazing book for every performance engineer.
on “Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?” ↗A note here that "front end" and "back end" are meant in the CPU microarchitecture sense, not the web development sense. I think Brendan Gregg's Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is still the single best volume on this topic; I'd recommend Gunther's Guerilla Capacity Planning as a useful followup to get a foothold on theory.
on “Top-down performance analysis methodology” ↗Brendan Gregg (the guy that gave that talk that the article linked to) wrote an extremely awesome book called systems performance. It is the best and most pragmatic operating system book I've read and is definitely worth a read. It will give you a better idea about how all of this eBPF stuff applies.
on “Unlocking eBPF power” ↗…on investment of software optimizations across that massive compute footprint saves millions of dollars. So it makes sense to have performance engineers like Brendan Gregg on the pay roll. His book on systems performance is ridiculously good and is useful for smaller orgs as well when systems performance degrades to the point where the customer is impacted.
on “There’s no place for expensive laptops with 8GB of RAM anymore” ↗thanks for the reminder! I'll go buy it now, Gregg is always an inspiration. Here's the link => http://www.brendangregg.com/systems-performance-2nd-edition-...
on “Poor Disk Performance” ↗