Points to Remember
Keep the following points in mind while performing the benchmarking and tuning excercise.
- Always document the test design in sufficient detail to allow others to accurately reproduce your results.
- Always range demand until the operating capacity of the system under test has been reached. Further increases in input rate do not result in proportional increases in output rate.
- Always document measured or estimated resource availability and consumption.
- Once an apparent operational limit has been reached, investigate to determine whether a true resource constraint has been reached. Consider adding resources such as adding memory, CPU or changing to a higher network bandwidth.
- If an operational limit has been reached without exhausting available resources:
- Consider whether tuning the system under test might further increase the operational capacity.
Consider whether the design or configuration of the test harness might be the true limiting factor in the experiment.