Some articles on performance monitoring and application tracing

IBM DeveloperWorks is branching out into other Unixes

[SeanW]

Hope this isn't construed as excessive self promotion, but the IBM developerWorks eServer site has been adding content that has to do with more generic Unix stuff rather than just AIX. 3 of the more recent pieces are by me, and are geared toward application and performance monitoring, mostly based on my experiences in web hosting.

1. Using sar to watch performance and go back in time to quantify user complaints
2. Application tracing with truss/strace to fix misbehaving applications
3. Web performance monitoring with RRDTool (this one is a tutorial, and I build a monitoring/graphing tool using RRDTool, cURL, and shell scripts)

Since links aren't allowed here, just go to IBM developerWorks's eServer section, and they'll either be on the front page or in the library.

Sean

[coopster]

the IBM developerWorks eServer site has been adding content that has to do with more generic Unix stuff rather than just AIX

I started harping on IBM years ago about embracing open source and other non-propietary OS and applications. Actually, I was more concerned with the application-side than I was with the OS-side. Now, first let me clarify that I am by no means a *nix pro -- not by a longshot. But I do know the old 400 and iSeries inside and out -- cut my teeth on 'em. Great servers. But I usually work hand-in-hand with a *nix admin when it comes to either a partitioned iSeries or even a stand-alone *nix server running IBM's Client Access ODBC. Here nor there, I have a couple questions ...

Has anybody ever ran performance monitoring (BTW, nice article on Expose Web performance problems with the RRDtool) using Java versus PHP (or Perl) on IBM platforms? IBM embraced Java years ago (perl too, but not as tightly integrated with the OS) and more recently (last couple years or so) PHP. I was just wondering if anybody has compared the two, Java versus any other? In my experience, Java seems much slower -- but I haven't had the opportunity to run any diagnostic tools such as those mentioned in the IBM article(s) ... how can I, they usually aren't my boxes ;-)

Second, IBM has a powerful DB, no doubt. For anybody that has run comparison diagnostics, how does database access compare between the different application language options?

Thanks for the contribution, SeanW. Enjoyed the reads.