I am working on a server, currently running SuSe enterprise linux 9.0.(willing to switch to RedHat) Its currently set up with 6 hard drives, 2 mirrored, the others in a raid 5, formatted in xfs. It has 8gb of ram, dual xeon 3.6ghz processors.

I am trying to maximize the performance on this server. The application runs jobs that take anywhere from 10 minutes, running just in memory, to running jobs that take 3-4 hours. When the job runs, it can get a load as high as 2.20.

I'm a semi-noob to linux, looking for some sort of direction or a website that I can reference.

Thanks in advance!!!!