Capacity Planning and Performance Monitoring with Free Tools

The Performance People

Performance Management with Free and Bundled Tools

Adrian Cockcroft Netflix Inc.

[email protected]

(Co-authored with Mario Jauvin

MFJ Associates

[email protected])

11 April 2023

April 11, 2023 Adrian Cockcroft and Mario Jauvin

Agenda

Overview of Capacity Planning Requirements and Data Sources

Performance Data Collection Free Network Monitoring Tools Free System Monitoring Tools Free Load Generation and Modelling Tools Licences and References


What are we talking about?

Network monitoring with

WireShark, MRTG, BigSister, Cacti,

Nagios, OpenNMS, Zenoss, Openxtra,

ntopDatabase Tier monitoring

With SEtoolkit, Orca,XEtoolkit

Application Tier monitoring with Orca,

Cacti, BigSister, Ganglia, XEtoolkit

QA Load generation with Grinder or SLAMD,

modelling with PDQ and R


Capacity Planning Requirements and Data

Sources


Definitions

Capacity– Resource utilization and headroom

Planning– Predicting future needs by analyzing historical data

and modeling future scenarios Performance Monitoring

– Collecting and reporting on performance data Free Tools

– Bundled with the OS or available for no $$$


Capacity Planning Requirements

We care about CPU, Memory, Network and Disk resources, and Application response times

We need to know how much of each resource we are using now, and will use in the future

We need to know how much headroom we have to handle higher loads

We want to understand how headroom varies, and how it relates to application response times and throughput


CPU Capacity Measurements

CPU Capacity is defined by CPU type and clock rate, or a benchmark rating like SPECrateInt2000

CPU utilization is defined as busy time divided by elapsed time for each CPU

CPU load average measures the average number of jobs running and ready to run


Memory Capacity Measurements

Physical Memory Capacity Utilization and Limits– Kernel memory– Shared Memory segment– Executable code, stack and heap– File system cache usage– Unused free memory

Virtual Memory Capacity - Swap Space Memory Throughput

– Page in and page out rates


Network Capacity Measurements

Network Interface Throughput– Byte and packet rates input and output

TCP Protocol Specific Throughput– TCP connection count and connection rates– TCP byte rates input and output

NFS/SMB Protocol Specific Throughput– Byte rates read and write– NFS/SMB service response times

HTTP Protocol Specific Throughput– HTTP operation rates– Get and put payload byte rates and size distribution


Disk Capacity Measurements

Detailed metrics vary by platform Easy for the simple disk cases Hard for cached RAID subsystems Almost Impossible for shared disk

subsystems and SANs– Another system or volume can be sharing a

backend spindle, when it gets busy your own volume can saturate, even though you did not change your own workload


Capacity Planning Challenges

Constantly changing infrastructure Limited attention span from staff Horizontally scaled commodity systems Per node software licencing costs too much Too many tools, too many agents per node Too much data, not enough analysis Non-linear and non-intuitive scalability Lack of tools and metrics for virtualized resources


Observability

Four different viewpoints– Management– Engineering– QA Testing– Operations

Each needs very different information Ideal would be different views of the same

performance database Reality is a mess of disjoint tools


Management Viewpoint

Daily summary of status and problems Business oriented metrics Future scenario planning Marketing and management input Concise report with dashboard style status

indicators Free tools: R, Spreadsheet and Web based

displays, no good summarization tools


Engineering Viewpoint

Large volumes of detailed data at several different time scales

Input to tuning, reconfiguring and future product development

Low level problem diagnosis Detailed reports with drill down and correlation

analysis Free tools: XE/SE Toolkit, Orca, Ganglia, Cacti, R


QA Test Viewpoint

Workload specification tools Load generation frameworks Testing for functionality and performance Regression tools to compare releases Modelling difference between test configuration

and production configuration Free Tools: The Grinder, SLAMD, R, PDQ


Operations Viewpoint

Immediate timeframe Real time display, updated in seconds Alert based monitoring High level problem diagnosis Simple high level graphs and views Free tools: BigSister, Nagios, OpenNMS,

MRTG, Cacti, Ganglia, WireShark, ntop


Measurement Data Interfaces Several generic raw access methods

– Read the kernel directly (not a good idea)– Structured system data (Solaris kstat, Linux /proc)– Process data– Network data– Accounting data– Application data

Command based data interfaces– Scrape data from vmstat, iostat, netstat, sar, ps– Higher overhead, lower resolution, missing metrics

Data available is platform specific either way Much more detail on this topic in the Solaris/Linux Performance

Measurement and Tuning Class


Free Network Monitoring Tools


SNMP

Simple network management protocol UDP protocol based on port 161 Client/server like

– Client is called management application entity– Server is called an agent entity

Agent entity is designed to be implemented on network hardware, router, switches, etc


SNMP – MIBs

Management information base Defines the structure and the semantic of the

information that can be reported on Most commonly used is MIB-II which defines a set of

standard networking attributes– Interface tables– System level information– Routing tables

Specified using ASN.1 (abstract syntax notation 1)


SNMP – commands

Called PDU (protocol data units) GET GETNEXT GETBULK SET Encoded using BER (basic encoding rules)


Versions

Version 1, original version done in May 1991 Version 2, around 1993. Failed because the

IETF credo of “rough consensus and running code” could not be met on securing SNMP

Turned into V2c for community string security (like V1)

Version 3, added security and complexity in 1998


SNMP tools

Too numerous to name all but… OpenNMS Nagios Cacti MRTG Net-snmp

– See www.snmplink.org


SNMP tools

Snmpwalk – will report all data in a specified MIB

getIf – will report data about interfaces and includes built-in MIB browser

Snmptable – will report tabular data from MIB tables


OpenNMS

Well…. it’s not that portable– 95% java is not 100% java– Requires about 20-30 different platform specific

packages (PostgreSQL, Perl, RRD tool, Tomcat 4 etc…)

– Difficult to install– Easy auto discovery– Web-based interface


OpenNMS

Main screen shot


OpenNMS

Node screen shot


Nagios

Easy to build/compile (on Solaris 10) Easy to install Quick response from CGI Configuration is manual and a pain

– 13 configuration files with all kinds of interrelated entries

– Tedious and error prone Requires plugins to do anything


Nagios

Main screen shot


Nagios

Host detail screen shot


ntop

Similar to familiar UNIX top tool for processes but used for network

Provide huge selection of real-time data Can be found at http://www.openxtra.co.uk/


ntop – Active Sessions


ntop Hosts


ntop Network Load


ntop_Network_Thruput


ntop Port Dist


ntop_Protocol_Dist


ntop Protocols


Zenoss

Open source monitoring and management of IT infrastructure

Zenoss core is free Other editions are for a fee Get it from http://www.zenoss.com/download/


zenoss Architecture


zenoss Dash Config


zenoss Google


zenoss Google Alerts


Zenoss Graphs


zenoss Topology


MRTG

Really simple to install and configure Require manual config file creation Only for MIB-II interface plotting out of the

box Graphing not flexible, axis, time etc


MRTG

Interface screen shot


MRTG

Other CPU screen shot


RRD tool

Software to store, retrieve and graph numerical time series data

Use a round robin algorithm Data files are a fixed size

– Don’t grow– Don’t require maintenance


RRD tool

Compiles on most platforms Used by many SNMP based tools

– OpenNMS– Cacti– BigSister– WeatherMap4RRD– MailGraph


RRD tool

14all CGI script that plots data similar to MRTG

Configurable to collect data at different interval (unlike MRTG)

Flexible and variable in what data can be collected


RRD tool

Sample screen shot


RRD tool

Screen shot


RRD tool

Create a RRD database

rrdtool create test.rrd \

--start 920804400 \

DS:speed:COUNTER:600:U:U \

RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:1:24 \

RRA:AVERAGE:0.5:6:10


RRD tool

Create a graph

rrdtool graph speed.png \

--start 920804400 --end 920808000 \

DEF:myspeed=test.rrd:speed:AVERAGE \

LINE2:myspeed#FF0000


Free Performance Data Collection and Rules

Toolkits


SE toolkit Example Tools A free performance toolkit for rapidly creating custom data sources Makes all the very extensive Solaris metrics easily available Very system specific and not enough metrics exist to port to Linux Written by Rich Pettit with contributions from Adrian Cockcroft Get SE3.4 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/setoolkit/ Open source with support for SPARC & x86 Solaris 8, 9, 10Function Example SE Programs

Rule Monitors cpg.se monlog.se mon_cm.se live_test.se percollator.se

zoom.se virtual_adrian.se virtual_adrian_lite.se

Disk Monitors siostat.se xio.se xiostat.se iomonitor.se iost.se xit.sedisks.se

CPU Monitors cpu_meter.se vmmonitor.se mpvmstat.se

Process Monitors msacct.se pea.se ps-ax.se ps-p.se pwatch.se pw.se

Network Monitors net.se tcp_monitor.se netmonitor.se netstatx.se nfsmonitor.se nx.se

Clones iostat.se uname.se vmstat.se nfsstat-m.se perfmeter.se xload.se

Data browsers aw.se infotool.se multi_meter.se

Contributed Code anasa dfstats kview systune watch orcollator.se

Test Programs syslog.se cpus.se pure_test.se collisions.se uptime.se dumpkstats.senet_example nproc.se kvmname.se


SE language features

SE is a 64bit interpreted dialect of C– Not a new language to learn from scratch!– Standard C /usr/ccs/bin/cpp used at runtime to preprocess SE scripts– Main omissions - pointer types and goto– Main additions - classes and “string” type– powerful ways to handle dynamically allocated data– built-in fast balanced tree routines for storing key indexed data

Dynamic linking to all existing C libraries– Built-in classes access kernel data– Supplied class code hides details, provides the data you want

Example scripts improve on basic utilities e.g. siostat.se, nx.se, pea.se Example rule based monitors e.g. virtual_adrian.se, orcallator.se

Creating Rules

Based on real experiences of all the things that go wrong

Capture an approximation to intuition Test and calibrate rules on as many systems as

possible Easy??



Configuring Rules Thresholds should be configured Very application dependent Capture the operating envelope

– Measure the underlying values– Measure peaks in normal operation– Note values during problems– Set thresholds to capture the difference

This applies to any tool– SE Toolkit, Cacti, Ganglia, Nagios, OpenNMS etc.


Rules as Objects

Define only the input and output information Hide implementation details Make high level rule objects trivial to use and

reuse SE Toolkit does it in three lines of code:

– #include <rules file>– Declare rule object as a typed variable– Read and use or print object status


"virtual adrian" rules summary

Disk Rule for all disks at once– Looks for slow disks and unbalanced usage

Network Rule for all networks at once– Looks for slow nets and unbalanced usage

Swap Rule - Looks for lack of available swap space RAM Rule - Looks for short page residence times CPU Power Rule

– Scales on MP systems– Looks for long run queue delays

Mutex Rule - Looks for kernel lock contention and high sys CPU time TCP Rule

– Looks for listen queue problems– Reports on connection attempt failures


XE Toolkit - www.xetoolkit.com

Complete re-write of SE Toolkit by Rich Pettit– Extensible Java collector, customize with jar files– Release 1.2 available April 2008– Multi-platform support Solaris, Linux/x86, Windows, BSD,

OSX, HP-UX, AIX, Linux/s390, Linux/Power Licencing

– Free GPL version for standard use and shared derivations– Open source, hosted at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xe-toolkit/

– Commercial support available if needed– Commercial product license for custom in-house derivations

Addresses all the issues people had with SE toolkit !


Captive Metrics / XE Toolkit Architecture


Free System Monitoring Tools


Collated Performance Data - Orca

Problems with time sync when collecting data from multiple tools– No timestamp at all for vmstat, netstat, df...– No timestamp by default for iostat and ps...– No way to collect realtime stats from an http logfile

Use SE Toolkit to generate one timestamped row containing all the data– First version of percollator.se written by Adrian Cockcroft in 1996– Extended orcallator.se written by Blair Zajac a few years later– Graphs generated by orca batch job feeding rrdtool based web pages– Active community developing tool at http://www.orcaware.com– Extended to collect much more data, including process workloads– Basic data collection ported to Linux, HP-UX and Windows

Orca is basically MRTG for System metrics rather than Network See http://www.orcaware.com/orca/docs/Orca_Understanding_Performance_Data.ppt


Orca data collections Collected using “procollator” reading info from /proc on Linux

[Uptime] [Average # Processes in Run Queue (Load Average)] [CPU Usage] [New Process Spawn Rate] [Number of System & Running Processes] [Context Switches & Interrupts Rate] [Interface Input Bits Per Second] [Interface Output Bits Per Second] [Interface Input Packets Per Second] [Interface Output Packets Per Second] [Interface Input Errors Per Second] [Interface Output Errors Per Second] [Interface Input Dropped Per Second] [Interface Output Dropped Per Second] [Interface Output Collisions] [Interface Output Carrier Losses] [TCP Current Connections] [IP Statistics] [TCP Statistics] [ICMP Statistics] [UDP Statistics] [Disk System Wide Reads/Writes Per Second] [Disk System Wide Transfer Rate] [Disk Reads/Writes Per Second] [Disk Transfer Rate] [Disk Space Percent Usage] [Physical Memory Usage] [Swap Usage] [Page Ins & Outs Rate] [Swap Ins & Outs Rate]

Orca on Solaris collects many more metrics than shown above Strength of Orca is lots of detailed metrics with low overhead for collection Easily customized to add more system metrics or application metrics Orca can already track HTTP traffic and parse log files


All metrics are stored in “round robin database” format

using RRDtool to generate displays over different time

spans

Web page is simple collection of plots with drill down by

metric or by time

Suitable for monitoring a relatively small number of

systems in great detail, e.g. backend database servers


Cacti – www.cacti.net

Web based user interface based on RRDtool More sophisticated GUI than Orca or MRTG Less sophisticated system metric collection,

but more coverage of networking Better management of groups of systems

and devices than Orca, useful for tens to hundreds of nodes

Access control and personalization for users


Ganglia – www.ganglia.info

Web based RRDtool GUI somewhat similar to Cacti Better management of clusters of systems and

devices than Cacti, useful for hundreds to thousands of nodes in a hierarchy of clusters

Provides many summary statistic plots at cluster level and collects detailed configuration data

XML based data representation Uses low overhead network protocol In common use at hundreds of large HPC Grid sites,

less visibly in use at some large commercial sites


BigBrother and BigSister

Network and system dashboard alert monitor Widely used at internet sites Bigbrother is at http://www.bb4.com Bigsister is at http://bigsister.graeff.com Bigsister seems to have more features, alert

logging, better portability and more efficient data collection. Compatible update to BB4.


Free QA Test and Modelling Tools


QA Test Requirements

Generate test workload– SLAMD, Grinder

Collect performance metrics– Any of the tools already mentioned

Report regression against baseline Predict capacity needed for production system

– Use spreadsheets for simple linear prediction– Use modelling tools such as PDQ for queuing models


Grinder 3 - Powerful New Features 100% Pure Java - works on any hardware platform and any

operating system that supports J2SE 1.3 and above. Java and Jython based load testing framework

– Web Browsers: simulate web browsers using HTTP, and HTTPS.– Web Services: test interfaces using SOAP and XML-RPC.– Database: test databases using JDBC.– Middleware: RPC and MOM based systems using IIOP, RMI/IIOP,

RMI/JRMP, and JMS.– Other Internet protocols: POP3, SMTP, FTP, and LDAP.

See http://grinder.sourceforge.net/g3/features.html J2EE Performance Testing with BEA WebLogic Server by Peter

Zadrozny, Philip Aston and Ted Osborne, originally published by Expert Press and now by APress uses Grinder 2 throughout.


SLAMD

Load generation framework, written in Java Originally built to test LDAP servers by Sun Extended to be very generic and published

as open source. Actively being developed. Sophisticated functions and user interface See http://www.slamd.com Latest Release 2.0 has better usability focus


PDQ Modelling Tool

Dr Neil Gunther’s toolkit at http://www.perfdynamics.com

Library used from C or Perl provides MVA queueing models

Use to calibrate in QA and predict in production PDQ modelling tool details:

– The Practical Performance Analyst Dr. Neil Gunther - McGraw-Hill, 1998 ISBN 0-07-912946-3

– Analyzing Computer System Performance with Perl:PDQ 2004, ISBN 3-54-020865-8


References and Conclusion


Licences for Free Tools

Open Source Initiative– “OSI Approved licences”– http://opensource.org/licenses/category

Comparisons of Common Licences– http://zooko.com/license_quick_ref.html


Web Pages and Books Adrian’s Performance and other topics blog

– http://perfcap.blogspot.com MFJ Associates performance tools link page

– http://www.mfjassociates.net/perf_links.html More free tools compiled by John Sellens

– http://www.generalconcepts.com/resources/monitoring/ More tools compiled by Openxtra

– http://www.openxtra.co.uk/resource-center/open_source_network_monitor_tools.php SE toolkit info: Sun Performance and Tuning - Java and the Internet - Adrian

Cockcroft and Richard Pettit - Sun Press/Prentice Hall, 2nd Edition, 1998 ISBN 0-13-095249-4

Solaris 8 and Linux: System Performance Tuning 2nd Edition – Gian-Paolo Musumeci, O’Reilly 2002 ISBN: 0-596-00284-X

Solaris Internals http://www.solarisinternals.com– Richard McDougall and James Mauro - new 2nd edition and new performance book by

Richard McDougall and Brendan Gregg


Concluding Remarks

Many large installations depend on free tools A full suite of functionality is available Several tools are needed to cover the bases Tradeoff between function and ease of use Support may be available, but typically

Google is the best support tool Functionality is increasing….


Questions?

[email protected]@mfjassociates.net

Capacity Planning and Performance Monitoring with Free Tools

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