Another 10 Performance Wins
Following on from my earlier 10 performance wins post, here is another group of 10 I have worked on. # Target Analyzed Key Tool Fixed Specific Improvement 11 redis System DTrace System scheduler 41% 12...
View ArticleBenchmarking the Cloud
Benchmarking, and benchmarking the cloud, is incredibly error prone. I provided guidance though this minefield in the benchmarking chapter of my book (Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud);...
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Systems Performance: available now
My new book Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is shipping now from your favorite online book supplier (informIT, amazon). Thanks to those who have ordered a copy! I’ve already received...
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The TSA Method
TSA Method in class (SmartOS) There are two basic performance analysis methodologies you can use for most performance issues. The first is the resource-oriented USE Method, which provides a checklist...
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Memory Leak (and Growth) Flame Graphs
Memory Leak Memory Flame Graph Your application memory usage is steadily growing, and you are racing against time to fix it. This could either be memory growth due to a misconfig, or a memory leak...
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Modes and Modality
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the average is the index of central tendency. But what if the tendency isn’t central? I’ve worked many performance issues where the latency or response time...
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Detecting Outliers
In computer performance, we’re especially concerned about latency outliers: very slow database queries, application requests, disk I/O, etc. The term “outlier” is subjective: there is no rigid...
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Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud
Systems performance analysis is an important skill for all computer users, whether you’re trying to understand why your laptop is slow, or optimizing the performance of a large-scale production...
View ArticleLinux Performance Analysis and Tools
At the Southern California Linux Expo earlier this year (SCaLE 11x) I presented a talk on Linux Performance Analysis and Tools. It’s a great conference, and I was happy to be back. My talk provided an...
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The Greatest Tool that Never Worked: har
har is the Hardware Activity Reporter. I’ve never seen it work, but it did help me solve a crucial performance issue. I saw har’s output in an article written in 2001 by Frédéric Parienté, the tool’s...
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Revealing Hidden Latency Patterns
Latency Heat Map Response time – or latency – is crucial to understand in detail, but many of the common presentations of this data hide important details and patterns. Latency heat maps are an...
View ArticleThe USE Method: SmartOS Performance Checklist
The USE Method provides a strategy for performing a complete check of system health, identifying common bottlenecks and errors. For each system resource, metrics for utilization, saturation and errors...
View ArticleUSENIX LISA 2012: Performance Analysis Methodology
At USENIX LISA 2012, I gave a talk titled Performance Analysis Methodology. This covered ten performance analysis anti-methodologies and methodologies, including the USE Method. I wrote about these in...
View ArticleUSENIX LISA 2010: Visualizations for Performance Analysis
My USENIX LISA talk from 2010 is now available on youtube, also embedded below. The title is Visualizations for Performance Analysis (and more), and showed how the full distribution of data could be...
View ArticleSurge 2012: Real-time in the real world
In September, I attended and spoke at the Surge’12 conference in Baltimore. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in performance. The theme with most talks was problems encountered at scale – and...
View ArticleActive Benchmarking
Benchmarking is often done badly: tools are run ad-hoc, without understanding what they are testing or checking that the results are valid. This can lead to poor architectural choices that haunt you...
View ArticleFISL13: The USE Method
In July, Bryan Cantrill, Deirdré Straughan and I spoke at FISL, one of the world’s largest open software conferences, in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I had a great time. My talk introduced the USE Method: a...
View Article10 Performance Wins
I work on weird and challenging performance issues in the cloud, often deep inside the operating system kernel. These have made for some interesting blog posts in the past, but there’s a lot more I...
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Subsecond Offset Heat Maps
“Wow, that’s weird!”. My subsecond offset visualization type looked great, but others found it weird and unfamiliar. I developed it for inclusion in Joyent’s Cloud Analytics tool for the purposes of...
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Linux Kernel Performance: Flame Graphs
To get the most out of your systems, you want detailed insight into what the operating system kernel is doing. A typical approach is to sample stack traces; however, the data collected can be time...
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