[dtrace-discuss] Using DTrace to monitor productions systems

[Adam Leventhal]

Hi Dirk,

We've used DTrace with great success on production applications at various
financial institutions. In parituclar I've used the pid provider to examine
a trading application to measure latency between different parts of the
system in precisely the way you suggest.

DTrace is always safe so there are no special precautions you need to make
when using it on a production system. The performance impact will be relative
to the frequency with which traced functions are called. On production systems
in particular, I'm always careful to trace exactly the functions I need
whereas I might just trace everything in a situation where I could safely
kill performance.

If you need some more specific advice let us know.

Adam

On Wed, Dec 13, 2006 at 11:28:19PM -0800, Dirk Volkmar wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> we are developing and operating an very critical application in the financial sector. Now our customer wants us to report performance data (roundtrip times of the messages routed). 
> My idea is using dtrace  to measure the times with the pid provider catching the timestamps on entry of the in and out functions of the processes.
> Now my questions ;-):
> 
> 1) Is this an appropriate method to monitor [b]production [/b]system ?
> 2) Are there impacts on the [b]stability [/b]of the system ?
> 3) I can imagine that dtracing impacts the [b]performance[/b]. Has anybody 	experience how much it will impact?
> 
> Thanks for Your Comments 
> Dirk
>  
>  
> This message posted from opensolaris.org
> _______________________________________________
> dtrace-discuss mailing list
> dtrace-discuss at opensolaris.org

-- 
Adam Leventhal, Solaris Kernel Development       http://blogs.sun.com/ahl