It is characteristic of most computer systems that they do not degrade gradually. The painful reality is that performance is acceptable day after day, until quite suddenly it all falls apart. When this happens, the administrator needs to be prepared to help the organization get through the crisis. Computer applications are growing ever more intelligent and easy to use. One of the by-products of making applications easier to use is that they usually also require more resources to run. And wherever productivity is a central factor in the decisions you make, performance considerations loom large and continue to play an important role in system management. Are you wondering, for example, if more expensive equipment would give better performance? The answer is often yes, but not always. This book will show you why it is important to understand the performance characteristics of the hardware and of the workload, and how they match up against each other. Windows 2000 Performance Guide takes you through problem solving techniques like measurement methodology, workload characterization, benchmarking, decomposition techniques, and analytic queuing models. This book covers:

• Processor performance

• Application profiling and hardware considerations

• Multiprocessing

• Memory and paging

• File cache

• Disk performance

• Networking

• IIS

The horror stories of failed development projects that did not meet cost and performance specifications reflect the fact that expectations about what computer technology can do far exceed the reality. Even as hardware performance continues to improve, managing performance will not get perceptibly easier. This book will give you the tools and information you need to meet the challenges of performance management now and in the future. Many of the popular computer books out there promise easy answers, but this is the only book for those tricky situations that have no direct precedent. Windows 2000 Performance Guide will give you the information and the conceptual framework to become your own Windows 2000 performance expert.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 7 Ratings

For anyone who depends on Windows 2000 to get the job done - 2002-04-11
Reviewer Rating:
Windows 2000 Performance Guide by computer experts Mark Friedman and Odysseas Pentakalos is a comprehensive, "user friendly" reference specifically designed for system administrators. Individual chapters cover processor performance, optimizing applications, multiprocessing, file caches, internet server performance and much more. Solid, closely researched, and illustrated with numerous examples using black-and-white photographs of computer screens to clearly outline the next step to be taken, Windows 2000 Performance Guide is a solid, comprehensive, and enthusiastically recommended core reference title for anyone who depends on Windows 2000 to get the job done.

Long on detail, short on actionable information - 2005-04-22
Reviewer Rating:
While it's possible it's helpful to someone somewhere to know 700 pages worth of performance measuring information, beginning at details, and ending at details, what's really needed is a simple flowchart.

If this book somewhere had just a small table saying something about acceptable measured values, and in turn what could be done to change each one, then we'd be getting somewhere. As it is, the book's a mess. The book gives a "starter set" of metrics, but it's on page 110, is six pages long, encompassing probably 100 measurements, and fails to note how the expected results / measurements would be at all connected to controllable factors.

From our perspective, speed was the desired result. It appears using the authors' standpoint and methodology that to buy a new computer would be far more economical than to run all 1200 tests that are poorly explained in this book.

Very good, Broad coverage of performance matters - 2008-03-05
Reviewer Rating:
I bought this book whilst doing performance analysis of an existing data distribution server. On the whole I am very impressed by this book - it covers a very broad range of performance matters (I won't bother listng them - much of the book can be previewed on the publisher's web-site). From a developer's point of view it is a little light on some areas, but these are mainly areas that an administrator doing tuning of an existing system would often not be looking at. For an administrator tuning existing systems it is very good indeed and certainly reminded me to add a couple more bits to my report. It isn't really aimed at developers designing new systems, but I would certainly recommend it to developers who are concerned with performance.

A couple of things that I would have liked to have seen in the book are:
(1) More detailed descriptions of each metric in PerfMon, together with what constitutes a good value and what doesn't.
(2) Details about socket options - how to choose values and what the impact of changing them is.

All in all, very good.

The Best Windows Performance Guide Ever - 2006-05-19
Reviewer Rating:
In my role as a Capacity Planning Analyst, this is the book I reach for first whenever I need information about Windows performance, monitoring, architecture, theory and practice. The book is rich in terms of information and experiences in how all these things in aggregate make the circle of life in terms of Windows performance. This is a must read for all who want a greater insight into how Windows works and how it can be measured. It has great insight and well thought out explanations, with experimental backing where applicable. I am looking forward to the next release of his work.

Lucid, thoughful, and offers many valuable insights - 2002-08-26
Reviewer Rating:
Recently I needed information about how Windows 2000 performs disk caching operations. After having exhausted my patience searching Microsoft's site, and being unable to find the information searching the net with Google, I finally found a reference to this book. The book quickly provided me with the detailed information I was seeking.

The Windows 2000 Performance Guide is the definitive book on its subject. It contains critical information that is often very hard to find, and in some cases simply unavailable, on a wide range of topics. The authors provide in-depth knowledge on everything from disk hardware to arcane operating system issues. Because the source of performance problems is often unclear, the book's breadth of scope is absolutely essential. These days, most computer experts are narrowly focused: it's just too difficult to broadly keep up with everything that is happening. Somehow, the authors of this book are able to offer real insights in many independent fields.

The book provides many real world examples. It also contains many valuable screenshots of performance monitoring tools under various load conditions. The writing is lucid, thoughtful, and offers many valuable insights. Another feature that I liked is the wealth of references the book offers. I found these references to various web sites, shareware tools, academic papers, and other information sources extremely useful.

The Windows 2000 Performance Guide is a must read for anyone interested in computer performance. Unlike so many other books that I've encountered that are merely a rehash of information available elsewhere, this book is a thoughtful, detailed, and thorough inquiry into its subject matter. Bravo!

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