Module 7: System Monitoring & Performance
Effective system monitoring distinguishes proactive system administrators from those who merely react to problems. This module teaches you monitoring strategies that enable administrators to maintain system health, predict capacity needs, and respond quickly to performance issues. You’ll begin by understanding key system metrics including CPU utilization, memory usage, disk I/O, and network statistics. You’ll learn to interpret these metrics in the context of different workloads and application requirements.
Log management and analysis skills receive extensive coverage as logs provide crucial insights into system behavior and problems. You’ll master systemd’s journalctl for system log analysis, learn traditional log file locations and organization, and understand log rotation policies. The module teaches you practical log analysis techniques, including pattern recognition and correlation methods that help identify root causes of system issues.
Performance analysis tools form the technical backbone of the module. You’ll learn to use advanced utilities like sar, iostat, vmstat, and specialized monitoring tools. You’ll practice systematic performance analysis methodologies and learn to correlate different metrics and identify bottlenecks across CPU, memory, storage, and network subsystems.
Alerting and monitoring strategies teach you to implement proactive monitoring systems that provide early warning of developing issues. You’ll learn to set appropriate thresholds that minimize false alarms while ensuring genuine problems receive prompt attention. Troubleshooting methodology concludes the module by teaching you structured approaches to complex system problems and documentation practices that support knowledge sharing.