Where do find information on, tuning theory for "How do I find the transaction rate in a system with four processes?"

Every process have a number of parameters, that I can change. Four processes with 8 parameters will give me 32 different combinations that I can try out. (buffer size, transaction speed cap..) One test run takes one hour. Therefore it will take time.

I'm hoping that someone will point me in the right direction. I guess what I'm after is some kind of theory on how transactions is measured and throttled in a complex system.

Like water flowing in a small river. How do I maximize speed without blowing up the system.

1. What search word in google will help me find information about tuning?

Or is it performance testing I am after? thinking

I'm new to stress testing, maybe this have to take long time.

From serverfault James

• The number of transactions that a server can process at any one time is directly related to how well designed the system is, and how much data there is in the system.

  An extremely poorly designed system running on the fastest hardware may only be able to handle 2-3 poorly written queries at a time. However an extremely well designed system can run tens of thousands of properly optimized queries at a time on a fairly low end system.

  Based on the information provided no useful answer can be returned.

  From mrdenny