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.