Red Hat Certified Specialist in Linux Performance Tuning Exam (EX442)

You should be able to perform the tasks listed below:

• Use utilities to analyze system behavior
  
  • Use utilities such as vmstat, iostat, mpstat, sar, gnome-system-monitor, top, powertop, and others to analyze and report system and application behavior
  • Use utilities such as Performance Co-Pilot (PCP) to analyze system behaviour
  • Use utilities such as dmesg, dmidecode, and sosreport to profile system hardware configurations
• Monitor and alter kernel behavior
  
  • Use /proc/sys, sysctl, and /sys to examine, modify, and set kernel run-time parameters
  • Configure kernel behavior by altering module parameters
• Analyze system and application performance
  
  • Analyze system and application behavior using tools such as ps, top, and Valgrind
  • Configure systems to run SystemTap scripts
  • Use the eBPF family of tools (e.g. syscount, gethostlatency and others) to diagnose system and application behavior
  • Given multiple versions of applications that perform the same or similar tasks, choose which version of the application to run on a system based on its observed performance characteristics
• Tune running systems
  
  • Alter process priorities of both new and existing processes
  • Select and configure tuned profiles
  • Manage system resource usage using control groups
• Tune memory utilization
  
  • Configure systems to support alternate page sizes for applications that use large amounts of memory
• Configure disk and file subsystems
  
  • Select proper I/O scheduling algorithm
  • Tune file system layout for a given use
• Tune network performance
  
  • Calculate network buffer sizes based on known quantities such as bandwidth and round-trip time
  • Set system buffer sizes based on those calculations

As with all Red Hat performance-based exams, configurations must persist after reboot without intervention.