Solaris PerfMon Thresholds / Context Switching?

Question

I've got a project that involves installing s/w on Solaris 10, with little else on it. (Tomcat, no traffic other then moi, etc.)

Installs go pretty slow (impatient developer time). In looking at Performance Meter (while waiting on installs/un-installs), I notice:

Context Switches run upwards of 512, PerfMon has a threshold set at 32/second. Interrupts run upward of 1600 w/ PerfMon threshold set at 50/second Packets run 64 +, again w/ a PerfMon threshold of 16/second.

So, are these thresholds un-realistic (i.e., left over from the single-processor dinosaur days) or is our system really laboring?

Answer 1

These metrics are of little value outside of context but the threshold looks indeed low. In any case, you should first figure out what resource (CPU, RAM, network, disk, etc.), if any, is limiting your application performance. Only if a bottleneck emerges should you investigate further to understand what's going on.