How to determine acceptable performance in Greenplum

Post date: Jan 23, 2014 3:48:16 PM

Before you start investigating the performance issues and starting tuning initiative, look for the answer of the following question

What is Acceptable Performance? you should know your system’s expected level of performance and define measurable performance requirements so you can accurately evaluate your system’s performance.

To set the performance goal, consider the following,

1. Baseline Hardware Performance

2. Performance Benchmarks

1. Baseline Hardware Performance

Most database performance problems are caused not by the database, but by the underlying systems on which the database runs. 

I/O bottlenecks, memory problems, and network issues can notably degrade database performance. 

Knowing the baseline capabilities of your hardware and operating system (OS) will help you identify and troubleshoot hardware-related problems before you explore database-level or query-level tuning initiatives. 

Run the gpcheckperf utility to validate hardware and network performance.

2. Performance Benchmarks

To maintain good performance or fix performance issues, you should know the capabilities of your DBMS on a defined workload. A benchmark is a predefined workload that produces a known result set. Periodically run the same benchmark tests to help identify system-related performance degradation over time. Use benchmarks to compare workloads and identify queries or applications that need optimization.

Many third-party organizations, such as the Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC), provide benchmark tools for the database industry. 

TPC provides TPC-H, a decision support system that examines large volumes of data, executes queries with a high degree of complexity, and gives answers to critical business questions. For more information about TPC-H, go to: http://www.tpc.org/tpch