When starting a new server, we tend to use stock images of the Ubuntu server and default installation process. The focus is on developing and improving the application code. The base operating system is not given much attention until we hit some performance issues. Once you reach the tip of application level optimizations and have collected all low-hanging fruit, the next obvious target is system monitoring and resource optimization. In this chapter, we will focus on various performance monitoring tools. We will learn to use various tools to track down the bottlenecks and then briefly look at possible solutions.

The chapter is separated in various recipes, and each covers the monitoring of a single system resource, such as the CPU and memory. At the end of the chapter, we will learn how to set up a performance baseline and use it to compare different configurations of system parameters.