racksaver.com

Upgrading a Linux Based Server to Achieve the Best Speeds Possible

One of the best things about linux based systems is the extent to which they can be configured. This is very true of desktop based linux distributions. However, just as one can enhance and tweak a linux desktop so can one get a lot of performance from linux based servers.

One of the first things everyone with a linux server should try is issuing a simple command line statement. First, the user should log in as the root user on their server. If the root isn’t available, an account with lesser privileges is acceptable. However, this will create some limitations on the extent of what can be modified.

Once one is logged into the server, he should run a program called top. This is as simple as typing “top” into the command line. After doing this, one will be presented with a large list of programs currently running on the server. It will show memory used, cpu cycles devoted to it, and a wide variety of other information. Read the rest of this entry »

How to Increase Linux Server Performance Without Spending a Penny

There are a lot of things that a Linux server administrator can do to maximize server performance without having to purchase any additional hardware. Often the easiest and therefore the first thing that should be looked for are unnecessary services which are consuming system resources which can be disabled. Unused services take up memory that could be used by other services even when idle. This free memory will then be automatically used by the operating system for cache which will further improve performance. There is also a security benefit to disabling unnecessary services as disabling those services decrease the number of attack vectors for hackers and malicious users.

The slowest component of a system is its disk and many other performance gains that can be had without adding hardware and short of application specific tuning revolve around disk use optimization. One way to alleviate a slow disk is by enabling disk write-caching which will greatly improve performance, especially for disk I/O bound applications. The hdparm utility can be used to check whether a disk has write-caching enabled using the command hdparm -I /dev/device. If the command output shows that disk write caching is disabled it can be enabled using the command hdparm -W 1 /dev/device. Read the rest of this entry »