One of the duties of a database administrator is to configure the cluster so that it behaves well for the current workload and context. The configuration is not static: most of the time, you will find yourself making changes to the configuration, so it is important that you feel comfortable with inspecting and changing the cluster's configuration.
Another important task, partially related to configuration, is monitoring the cluster in order to understand how the system is actually behaving, and whether there are bottlenecks and problems to be solved. Such problems can sometimes be solved by making changes to the configuration of the cluster, by using different hardware (for example, increasing the available memory), and sometimes by fixing the applications that could be causing the bottleneck.
This chapter will show you how to manage and inspect...
