Performance optimization in Linux doesn't always mean what we might think. It's not just a matter of outright speed; sometimes it's about tuning the system so that it fits into a small memory footprint. You'd be hard-pressed to find a programmer that does not want to make programs run faster, regardless of the platform. Linux programmers are no exception.

What is Post-Link Optimization for Linux on POWER? Post-Link Optimization for Linux® on POWER™, also known as FDPR-Pro, is a performance-tuning utility used to improve the execution time and the real memory utilization of user-level application programs, based on their run-time profiles.

In the first piece in this series we looked at the role schedulers play in I/O optimization. But how do you actually select and tune a scheduler to increase I/O performance in practice?

If you are using nginx as your webserver, you are looking for a performance boost and better speed. nginx is fast by default, but you can optimize its performance and the performance of all parts (like PHP and MySQL) that work together with nginx. Here is a small, incomprehensive list of tips and tricks to configure your LEMP system (Linux, nginx, MySQL, PHP-FPM) for maximum performance.

Small files performance is still the Achiles heel of GlusterFS. Tuning for replication (AFR, mirroring), distributed and NUFA setups is a non-trivial task, and you must know your application behaviour, your hardware and network infrastructure.

This is a five part series that shows you how to tune your web server for best performance. The series covers partition placement, CPU, I/O, Memory and Network.

Get an introduction to swap (paging) space, learn how to configure and administer it, capture statistics, and tune your Virtual Memory Manager (VMM) settings to provide for optimum swap (paging) space configuration and performance.

Thousands concurrent parallel read write accesses over tens of millions of small files is a terrible performance tuning problem for e-mail servers.

You must understand and fine tune all your infrastructure chain, following the previous articles for data storage and multipath on Debian 5.x Lenny.

It can be tempting to throw hardware at MySQL performance problems, but there are ways to tune your SQL database so that it doesn't always need more power. Sean Hull gives some excellent tips on simplifying, strengthening, and speeding up your MySQL database.