[dtrace-discuss] DTrace Data Interpretation

Brendan Gregg
Wed, 21 Dec 2005 04:29:03 -0000

G''Day Nitin,

On Mon, 19 Dec 2005, Nitin Sharma wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Does there exist a tool to parse through the output of various DTrace
> scripts such as dexplorer,iosnoop, cpusnoop , cpudist etc. when these
> are run iteratively for
> few hours on a system running an ISV application ?
> Specifically I am looking for a way to make intelligent inferences from
> the reams of data that will be produced when the scripts are run
> iteratively.

Not yet, but it''s a common request. It''s on my todo list as,

   * Wizards that run the tools for you and present findings in English.

It''s difficult to write a tool that makes intelligent deductions for
every
customer environment - ie, every database, application and storage array,
especially since they are moving targets and change from version to
version.

It''s a pet topic of mine. There are too many so-called performance
monitoring solutions that plot vmstat and iostat outputs, with no effort
to make sensible inferences from the data. Some inferences can certainly
be made, and should be made.

I''ll post here when I have some demonstration tools that do this....

cheers,

Brendan

[Sydney, Australia]