Performance issues

For this chapter, we will continue the scenario that we covered in Chapter 3, Troubleshooting a Web Application, where we are a new systems administrator at a new company. As we arrive to start our day, a fellow systems administrator asks us to look into a server being "slow."

When asked for details, the only information our colleague could provide was the hostname and the IP of the server deemed "slow." Our peer mentioned that a user reported it and that the user did not provide many details.

In this scenario, unlike in the scenario discussed in Chapter 3, Troubleshooting a Web Application we don't have much information to begin with. It also seems that we are not able to ask the user troubleshooting questions. It is not uncommon as a systems administrator to be required to troubleshoot an issue with very little information. In fact, this type of scenario is quite common.

It's slow

"It's slow" is problematic to troubleshoot. The biggest problem with a complaint about a server...