Performance tuning
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Performance tuning is the improvement of system performance. Typically in computer systems, the motivation for such activity is called a performance problem, which can be either real or anticipated. Most systems will respond to increased load with some degree of decreasing performance. A system's ability to accept higher load is called scalability, and modifying a system to handle a higher load is synonymous to performance tuning.
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Systematic tuning follows these steps:
- Assess the problem and establish numeric values that categorize acceptable behavior.
- Measure the performance of the system before modification.
- Identify the part of the system that is critical for improving the performance. This is called the bottleneck.
- Modify that part of the system to remove the bottleneck.
- Measure the performance of the system after modification.
- If the modification makes the performance better, adopt it. If the modification makes the performance worse, put it back the way it was.
This is an instance of the measure-evaluate-improve-learn cycle from quality assurance.
A performance problem may be identified by slow or unresponsive systems. This usually occurs because high system loading, causing some part of the system to reach a limit in its ability to respond. This limit within the system is referred to as a bottleneck.
A handful of techniques are used to improve performance. Among them are code optimization, load balancing, caching strategy, distributed computing and self-tuning.