Windows 2000 Performance Guide

Acknowledgments

Both authors gratefully acknowledge the support and assistance of Robert Denn and his staff at O’Reilly, without whom the book you hold in your hands would never have been completed. We are especially grateful for Robert’s steady hand and patience throughout the long gestation period for this book. At one point we thought that he might select an engraving of a sloth to adorn the front cover. We would also like to acknowledge the help of many other individuals who reviewed earlier drafts of the book, including Dave Butchart, Janet Bishop, Bob Gauthier, Todd Glasgow, Kitrick Sheets, Jim Quigley, and Rich Olcott. They all contributed to making the final text clearer and more readable. Any errors that remain are solely the responsibility of the authors.

Mark would like to acknowledge the support of Ziya Aral and George Teixiera of Datacore for allowing him to complete this book on their watch. He is grateful for the long and fruitful collaboration with Stets Newcomb, Phil Henninge, and Dave Steier, working out the details of the Windows 2000 performance monitoring API. Special thanks to Joanne Decker for watching over me during this period. Barry Merrill, in particular, was helpful in getting that project off the ground, and his enthusiastic encouragement over the years is greatly appreciated. Russ Blake and Bob Watson from Microsoft also provided valuable support and assistance when we were starting out. Bob Gauthier, Jim Quigley, Sharon Seabaugh, Denis Nothern, and Claude Aron all contributed useful ideas and practical experiences. Also, thanks to Jee Ping, Kitrick Sheets, Dave Solomon, and Mark Russinovich for sharing their knowledge of Windows 2000 operating system internals.

Mark would also like to recognize some of the many individuals who contributed to his understanding of the discipline of computer performance evaluation over the past twenty years of his deepening involvement in the field. Alexandre Brandwajn and Rich Olcott deserve special recognition for being stimulating collaborators over a long and fruitful period. Thanks to Jeff Buzen, Pat Artis, Ken Sevcik, Barry Merrill, Dick Magnuson, Ben Duhl, and Phil Howard for all nurturing my early interest in this subject. A belated thanks to Kathy Clark of Landmark Systems for allowing me the opportunity to practice what I preached in the area of mainframe performance. A nod to Bob Johnson for giving me the courage to even attempt writing a book in the first place and to Bob Thomas for encouraging my writing career. To Bernie Domanski, Bill Fairchild, Dave Halbig, Dan Kaberon, Chris Loosely, Bruce McNutt, Rich Milner, Mike Salsburg, Ray Wicks, Brian Wong, and many other friends and colleagues too numerous to mention from the Computer Measurement Group, I owe a debt of gratitude that I can never repay for having shared their ideas and experiences so freely.

Thanks to the folks at Data General for giving us access to the CLARiiON disk array, and the folks at 3Ware Corporation for letting Odysseas use their RAID adapters. Thanks also to Ed Bouryng, Burton Strauss, Avi Tembulkar, and Michael Barker at KPMG for getting Odysseas involved with their performance tuning effort.

Odysseas would like to thank Edward Lazowska, Kenneth Sevcik, and John Zahorjan, who got him started in the area of performance modeling of computer systems with their summer course at Stanford University. I appreciate the support of Yelena Yesha from the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, and Milt Halem at NASA’s Center for Computational Sciences, who got me involved with modeling the performance of hierarchical mass storage systems and supported me throughout that effort. Special thanks to Dr. Daniel Menascé of George Mason University for taking me under his wing. Danny generously shared his extensive knowledge and experience in the field of performance evaluation and modeling. He was also instrumental in honing my technical writing and research skills.

I want to thank my mother and brothers for their love and support over the years. I owe sincere gratitude to my father who always believed in me. If he were still alive, he would have been proud to see this book. Last, but not least, I must extend my most sincere gratitude to my wife Yimin. Throughout the long gestation period in getting this book completed, she took care of our two wonderful kids, John and Sophia, while I disappeared down in the basement to finish that very last chapter or make that very last modification. Despite the extra effort that she had to exert to compensate for my absence, she was supportive throughout.