Understanding Slowness

One of the dying skill sets in today’s engineering teams is the multi-disciplinary analyst that can truly dissect dysfunction in the radically complex architectures of today. As tools emerge that connect the dots, it might be faster to collect the data needed to analysis and decision making, but the knowledge and techniques to actually make the assessments needed are hard to come by.

In this session, we’ll walk through a complex architecture and discuss what an engineer in this role really needs to understand. We’ll analyze a few anecdotal problems and see why this world of magical automation and elastic deployments will never really displace the need for root on a production box, a debugger, and the ability to move fast, take risks and destroy performance problems.

Transcript

1. Slow is the new down. Understanding Slowness When shit goes wrong, the gloves come off.
2. Goals ❖ Approach an understanding of your architecture, ❖ Convert this understanding into a strategic plan ❖ Develop logistics for diagnosis ❖ Discuss discipline around remediation
3. The first step Understand Build a map ! Build two ! ! “If you don’t have a good map of your architecture, Dora will whoop you.” -Theo
4. How you’d like to think of Your architecture Elegant
 Beautiful in its simplicity
 Robust
 Resilient
5. When in actuality Your
 Architecture is ! Organically grown
 Cancerous tumors Disaster waiting to happen Hella complicated ! of which you are
 
 Inexplicably proud Photograph courtesy of Herman Rhoids
6. Map #1 High-level map Architectural components
 Connectedness
 Data flow
7. Map #2 Low-level map Component versions Component languages OS/NICs/HBAs Location Switches/Routers/FW Connected Service details
8. Develop Strategic Plan There are 2 types useful SREs: ! Spanning several boundaries ! Spanning all boundaries Photograph courtesy of Tambako The Jaguar https://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/4598642399
9. You can’t play ball without bases. Who’s on first? Establish who is responsible for each component in each context. ! Establish who is responsible when that person fails
 (upward). ! Establish who is responsible when that person needs help
 (upward and downward)
10. Nothing will ever be “broken”
 if it isn’t expected to “work.” Expectations Set expectations for
 breakages and slowdowns. ! What you build will break, understanding under what stress is your job as an engineer.
11. Parts are parts. Ø tech loyalty Constructing a solution from parts. ! Parts are replaceable. ! Have a list of replacement vendors of part alternates. ! If you design a solution relying on a part available only from a single vendor, you have accomplished lock-in. Photograph courtesy of Jason Ilagan https://www.flickr.com/photos/thepen/428014152
12. When things are broken (or slow) Logistics matter Observability ! Tool parity ! Safety harnesses
13. You cannot improve
 what you cannot measure Measure Cut once Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper 1906-1992
14. The one beast you cannot slay: Latency You must subdue it
 
 First you must understand it
15. Averages are for chumps Histograms over Aggregations Reducing many observations S to N values (∀ |N| << |S|) is the definition of lossy. ! or… “you don’t know shit”
16. Exploring quantiles is simple and can provide increased understanding. Quantiles Time-series histograms are a lot of information to digest. ! Moving quantiles can often provide much more insight.
17. Remember that you’re consolidating time. Granular data Time consolidation is needed. ! It can be misleading. ! Ask good statistical questions.
18. Knowing your q(0.99) is “too high” is one thing… Work backwards Work backwards. ! At what quantile are you?
19. mvalue: http://www.brendangregg.com/FrequencyTrails/modes.html Understand Workloads
20. man(1) is a tool’s tool. Tools Tools do not a master craftsman make. ! Regardless, know your damn tools. ! There are three types of tools. Photograph courtesy of James Bowe https://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesrbowe/7164489201
21. Tool type #1 Observation Taking measurements. ! Inspecting state. ! Inspecting conversation. Photograph courtesy of Gordon Wrigley https://www.flickr.com/photos/tolomea/4196160169
22. Tool type #2 Synthesis Synthesizes something to enable the use of tool type #1 Photograph courtesy of Simon Yao https://www.flickr.com/photos/smjb/8107539280
23. Tool type #3 Manipulation Changing state. ! Used for testing hypotheses. Photograph courtesy of DragonFlyCC https://www.flickr.com/photos/ladydragonflyherworld/4299545598
24. Favorite tools Martial Arts • DTrace • truss/ktrace/strace • tcpdump/snoop • mdb/gdb/dbx/lldb • sar/mpstat/iostat/vmstat ! • curl ! • vi/echo • sysctl/mdb(-w) • DTrace(-w) #1 #2 #3 Photograph courtesy of Republic of Korea https://www.flickr.com/photos/koreanet/6099430458
25. Lorem Ipsum Dolor Indeed Anecdotes This one time at band camp Photograph courtesy of umjanedoan https://www.flickr.com/photos/umjanedoan/497411169
26. Latency I’m huge in Japan Latency for a hot landing page jumps from around 300ms to around 450ms. ! No changes in latency to other regions.
27. Latency Scrub in
 or go home Latency for disk writes radically change behavior. ! It’s as if we have a new workload. ! We do not have a new workload. ! … we do have a new workload. ! Photograph courtesy of Phalinn Ooi https://www.flickr.com/photos/umjanedoan/497411169
28. Latent effect Hitting the wall Disk I/O latency goes to hell at 3pm. ! Turns out disk throughput is plateaued. ! No change in configuration near 3pm. ! Oops, I tripped at 10am. Illustration courtesy of Jeff Warren https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreywarren/354553098
29. Thank You