Dalleon Systems : Server Performance Management

A Business Approach to Server Performance Management

This is not just another Capacity Planning book, or Performance Management guide. It doesn't go into details of what parameters to change to fix particular problems. There are already plenty of sources for that information on the 'net. This book will tell you how to do Server Performance Management so that your company executives will recognise you as a real asset to the organisation. If not as someone who actually makes them a profit, then at least as someone who saves them more than they cost to employ. You will learn that the biggest benefits are to be able to see both the commercial, business side of the operation and the technical, I.T. side and to be able to explain and understand the factors that are important to both.

The book does assume you know your way around a server - of whatever flavour your organisation uses and that you have at least a passing knowledge of the applications and software they run. This is not the only publication you will need to become a fully functioning server performance analyst, but it is full of solid information, techniques, practical ideas and guidance that I have not seen written down anywhere else.

The first section deals with the traditional approach to performance monitoring. This includes starting right at the beginning and setting up a strategy for performance monitoring, and what to look for in a bought-in solution. The remaining two parts take you out of the IT realm and show you how to build your own performance monitoring system and then how to use your technical data combined with business information in a series of real-world server performance management / capacity planning tasks that will give you real business benefits.

The Table of Contents shows that topics are dealt with in a succinct way, to get you working as quickly as possible.

Excerpts - 2 free chapters

The first sample, titled What to Measure - overview is from the Basic Functions part of the book. It introduces the 5 server attributes that determine the amount of work it can do. The second sample is taken from the final part of the book, which is about using all the information you have for the benefit of your organisation. This particular section on Server Consolidation is an example of the high-value work you should be spending your time on, while the performance monitoring system automatically does all the mundane, repetitive tasks.
Once you've read these, you'll know what to expect from the rest of the book, which I hope you'll decide to buy.

Buying the book

The book is available as an Acrobat (PDF) download.
When you click on the link, you will be taken to a distributor's website, called Lulu.com that hosts the book. Here you will have to provide an email address and a password to get access to the book. After that it's a normal online secure shopping cart purchase. You'll need your credit card details, plus a postal address (although nothing gets posted to you). Once you have paid, you'll be taken straight to a download page on the Lulu website where you can download the ebook immediately.

The book is priced in British Pounds (£) and your credit card company will convert the £5 cost into your local currency on your bill. At present it's about $8 US, or €6. If you want to get an exact conversion, www.xe.com can give you today's rate, though your credit card company will use their own rate - hopefully not too much more.

If you don't like the idea of giving away your email address, which isn't information I have asked for or that I get to see, you can use a "disposable" email address. I have tried ordering using an address from www.spamgourmet.com and the purchase went through smoothly. If you wish, once you have downloaded the book, you can have your credit card details removed from the distributor's website and you can even cancel the account. Make sure you have downloaded the book to your PC before you do delete the account.

Here's the link to the book