Visualizing DTrace: Sun Storage 7000 Analytics

Talk given by Bryan Cantrill of Sun Microsystems at the 23rd Large Installation System Administration Conference (LISA '09).

System administrators have long been unable to meaningfully visualize the run-time performance of their systems. This is not (merely) an interface problem—the data available to visualize has not historically extended beyond basic counters and the ability to visualize the performance of the system has therefore not extended much beyond simple graphing of these scalar values. However, with the introduction of DTrace and its ability to perform ad hoc instrumentation of production systems, the data available to visualize has become essentially limitless, with the possibilities only constrained by our ability to build facilities that can ask the right questions and cogently display the answers. This talk describes one such DTrace-based system visualization facility: the appliance analytics found in the new Sun Storage 7000 series. This talk will demonstrate the facility, explain its innards, and provide examples of the ways visualization has allowed new answers to old questions and has itself posed new questions about our systems.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• USENIX
• LISA
• system administration
• storage
• DTrace