Compaq ProLiant 1000 Configuration and Tuning of Sybase System 11 for Microsof - Page 14

Configuration and Tuning of Sybase System 11 for Microsoft Windows NT on Compaq Servers Page 11 CPU Performance Monitor Objects and Their Meaning This section provides you with some important Performance Monitor objects that you can monitor to gain insight into the system processor utilization. Object: Processor Counter: % Processor Time The % Processor Time counter monitors the percent of CPU utilization of all threads (both Privileged Mode and User Mode threads) running on the system. This counter is very useful in determining whether or not you have a CPU bottleneck. Consistent CPU utilization of over 95% on all processors is a safe indicator of a CPU bottleneck. In such case, add another system processor or upgrade the existing processor(s) to the next generation processor(s). You may also review your logical database design to make sure it is designed as efficiently as possible. As stated elsewhere, hardware tuning and upgrades can only partially compensate for an inefficiently designed database. Object: Processor Counter: % Privileged Time, % User Time In a dedicated Sybase SQL Server environment, % Privileged Time is typically the percentage of time the system processor is spending executing NT kernel commands, much of this time is associated with processing Sybase SQL Server I/O requests. % User Time is the percentage of time the system processor is spending executing user applications, such as Sybase SQL Server. If Sybase SQL Server finds all (or most of the frequently used) objects in the data cache, and does heavy processing with these objects (such as table joins), very little I/O is generated. As a result, % Privileged Time can be low, may be in the 5-15% range, whereas % User Time can be as high as 85-95%. On the contrary, if Sybase SQL Server generates a large amount of I/O, % Privileged Time will be substantially higher (30-40%) and % User Time will be substantially lower (60-70%). Both of these counters are very useful in determining how different types of operations are utilizing the system processor(s). If your system is spending too much time doing I/O, you may need to further investigate the disk subsystem and how to relieve it of some I/O. You may also need to add more memory. If your system is spending most time doing Sybase SQL Server computing, you may want to investigate denormalization, reduction of the number of joins, horizontal partitioning, or adding/upgrading your system processor. Memory Utilization, Monitoring and Optimization This section provides information on parameters that you can set to influence performance from the system memory perspective and tools you have available to monitor the behavior of the system. Window NT Paging: Detection and Avoidance In a dedicated Sybase SQL Server environment, Window NT Paging can occur when you allocate too much memory to Sybase SQL Server and the remaining memory does not satisfy Windows NT. In a non-dedicated Sybase SQL Server environment, memory allocated to other programs also plays a significant role. Keep in mind that to reduce or eliminate paging, you can either add more physical memory or reduce the amount of memory allocated to your processes, such as Sybase SQL Server. We recommend starting with allocating a minimum of 16 megabytes to Windows NT and the rest to Sybase SQL Server and carefully monitoring the behavior of the system. © 1996 Compaq Computer Corporation, All Rights Reserved Doc No 143A/0596