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Maybe the problem that I had with this book is that I was expecting something else, something on the same lines as Systems Performance by Brendan Gregg (which has much detail on actual measurement of performance). Bondi covers a great deal of the theory around performance engineering. There’s a whole chapter that is devoted to queuing theory. Then there is much on planning and requirements and how to interpret and present measurements.

I did quite enjoy the chapter on ‘Scalability and Performance’ (which has an amusing example of the cloakrooms at the New York Met and Modern Art museums and the Louvre). The following chapter on pitfalls in measurement contained some sound practical advice.

The parts of the book that are ‘down to the metal’ are a brief mention of ‘ps’ on Unix for memory measurement and another of ‘perfmon’ on Windows for network measurement. That’s too abstract for me – I guess that you need to be working on a large system with hundreds or more staff and a team dedicated the system performance in order to be able to benefit from a book like this.

Not recommended.