Some other items to consider in helping to achieve maximum performance are whether your system requires more memory or more CPU. In order to check these, you must use the facilities provided by the operating system you are running.
If paging occurs, you need to reduce overall memory consumption by DB2 and other applications. The buffer pool commonly uses a lot of memory which results in performance improvements through reduced I/O. However, if the buffer pool is too big it can cause paging. The Performance Configuration SmartGuide provides recommendations for the size of the buffer pool.
You should also consider that the application you are running might be the source of performance problems. The Road Map to DB2 Programming provides an overview of the tools available to help you determine the cause of the problem in the application so that it can be fixed. (This assumes the application was written in-house.)
When an application is started, you can improve the time that is spent on database initialization with the activate database command. If a database has not been started, and a connect is encountered in an application, then the application must wait while the database manager starts up the required database before it can do any work with that database. This is a startup "cost" that is borne only by the first application to access a particular database. Once the database is started, all other applications can connect to it and use it without this time cost.
Databases activated with the activate command can be shut down using the Stop action from the pop-up menu for an instance, or using the deactivate database command. For more information on these commands, see the Command Reference.