The USE Method provides a strategy for performing a complete check of system health, identifying common bottlenecks and errors. For each system resource, metrics for utilization, saturation and errors are identified and checked. Any issues discovered are then investigated using further strategies.
In this post, I’ll provide an example of a USE-based metric list for use within a SmartOS SmartMachine (Zone), such as those provided by the Joyent Public Cloud. These use the illumos kernel, and so this list should also be mostly relevant for OmniOS Zones, and to a lesser degree (due to some missing features) Solaris Zones. This is primarily intended for users of the zones. For the system administrators of the physical systems (via the Global Zone), also see the Solaris checklist, which has greater visibility.
Cloud limits (software resource controls) are listed first, as they are usually encountered before the physical limits.
Cloud Limits
These cover CPU, memory, disk I/O (file system), and network.
| component | type | metric |
|---|---|---|
| CPU cap | utilization | sm-cpuinfo (previously jinf -c); raw counters: kstat -p caps::cpucaps_zone*:, “usage” == current CPU used, “value” == CPU cap |
| CPU cap | saturation | uptime load averages are zone-aware; per-process: prstat -mLc 1, “LAT”; rough counter: kstat -p caps::cpucaps_zone*:above_sec |
| CPU cap | errors | N/A |
| Memory cap | utilization | sm-meminfo rss for main memory (previously jinf -m); sm-meminfo swap for virtual memory; zonememstat, “RSS” vs “CAP”; prstat -Z, zone “RSS”, “SIZE” (VM); raw counters: kstat -p memory_cap:::, “rss” vs “physcap”, “swap” vs “swapcap” |
| Memory cap | saturation | zonememstat, increasing “NOVER” (# over) and “POUT” (paged out); per-process: prstat -mLc 1, “DFL”; some raw counters: kstat -p memory_cap:::anonpgin |
| Memory cap | errors | DTrace failed malloc()s; raw counters: kstat -p memory_cap:::anon_alloc_fail |
| FS I/O throttle | utilization | N/A – it kicks in only when needed (see saturation) |
| FS I/O throttle | saturation | vfsstat, “d/s” (delays/sec), and magnitude of “del_t” (average delay time, us) |
| FS I/O throttle | errors | N/A |
| FS capacity | utilization | df -h, “used” / “size” |
| FS capacity | saturation | once it’s full, ENOSPC |
| FS capacity | errors | DTrace errno for FS syscalls; /var/adm/messages file system full messages |
| Network cap | utilization | dladm show-linkprop -p maxbw for max bandwidth (if set); dladm show-link -s -i 1 net0, for current throughput; nicstat can also show throughput |
| Network cap | saturation | not available from within a zone (need to DTrace mac_bw_state & SRS_BW_ENFORCED) |
| Network cap | errors | N/A |
- For the Joyent Public Cloud, the CPU cap is the bursting limit. You are bursting when your CPU usage is over the kstat “caps::cpucaps_zone*:baseline”. If everyone bursts at the same time, your minimum usage should be the baseline, which is provided by the Fair Share Scheduler (FSS).
- sm-cpuinfo is from the smtools package.
Storage devices (disks) are not listed, since limits for storage I/O are imposed at the file system layer.
Physical Resources
Since Zones are OS-Virtualization (OS partitioning), the physical resources are not emulated or virtualized, and many of the observability tools will show you the entire physical system. This can be both good – you can really understand what’s going on, and confusing – why are the resources busy when my system is idle? (it’s someone else; you can’t see their process address space).
| component | type | metric |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | utilization | per-cpu: mpstat 1, “idl”; system-wide: vmstat 1, “id”; per-process: prstat -c 1 (“CPU” == recent), prstat -mLc 1 (“USR” + “SYS”); per-kernel-thread: not available from within a zone |
| CPU | saturation | system-wide: vmstat 1, “r”; per-process: prstat -mLc 1, “LAT” |
| CPU | errors | fmdump |
| Memory capacity | utilization | system-wide: vmstat 1, “free” (main memory), “swap” (virtual memory); per-process: prstat -c, “RSS” (main memory), “SIZE” (virtual memory) |
| Memory capacity | saturation | system-wide: vmstat 1, “sr” (bad now), “w” (was very bad); vmstat -p 1, “api” (anon page ins == pain), “apo”; per-process: prstat -mLc 1, “DFL” |
| Memory capacity | errors | fmdump; DTrace failed malloc()s |
| Network Interfaces | utilization | nicstat (see notes below); kstat (look for physical interface kstats, eg, kstat -p | grep ifspeed to find their names, and then kstat -p ixgbe::mac: for ixgbe interfaces) |
| Network Interfaces | saturation | nicstat; kstat for whatever custom statistics are available (eg, "nocanputs", "defer", "norcvbuf", "noxmtbuf"); netstat -s, retransmits |
| Network Interfaces | errors | netstat -i, error counters; kstat for extended errors, look in the interface and "link" statistics (there are often custom counters for the card); driver internals not available from within a zone |
| Storage device I/O | utilization | system-wide: iostat -xnz 1, "%b" |
| Storage device I/O | saturation | iostat -xnz 1, "wait" |
| Storage device I/O | errors | iostat -En; driver internals not available from within a zone |
| Storage capacity | utilization | swap: swap -s; file systems: "df -h" |
| Storage capacity | saturation | once it's full, ENOSPC |
| Storage capacity | errors | DTrace errno on FS syscalls; /var/adm/messages file system full messages |
| Storage controller | utilization | iostat -Cxnz 1, compare to known IOPS/tput limits per-card |
| Storage controller | saturation | look for kernel queueing: sd (iostat "wait" again) |
| Storage controller | errors | /var/adm/messages; driver internals not available from within a zone |
| Network controller | utilization | infer from kstat or nicstat and known controller max tput |
| Network controller | saturation | see network interface saturation |
| Network controller | errors | kstat for whatever is there; driver internals not available from within a zone |
| CPU interconnect | utilization | not available from within a zone |
| CPU interconnect | saturation | not available from within a zone |
| CPU interconnect | errors | not available from within a zone |
| Memory interconnect | utilization | not available from within a zone |
| Memory interconnect | saturation | not available from within a zone |
| Memory interconnect | errors | not available from within a zone |
| I/O interconnect | utilization | not available from within a zone |
| I/O interconnect | saturation | not available from within a zone |
| I/O interconnect | errors | not available from within a zone |
- For Joyent SmartMachines, Cloud Analytics (both the GUI and API) provide additional details from the physical system (global zone) that are not directly visible from within the SmartMachine.
- CPU utilization: a single hot CPU can be caused by a single hot thread, or mapped hardware interrupt. Relief of the bottleneck usually involves tuning to use more CPUs in parallel.
- nicstat may already be available in the SmartMachine; if not, there are both C and Perl versions (either may need a little tweaking to work properly).
- vmstat "r": this is coarse as it is only updated once per second.
- Memory capacity utilization: interpreting vmstat's "free" has been tricky across different Solaris versions (we documented it in the Perf & Tools book), due to different ways it was calculated, and tunables that affect when the system will kick-off the page scanner. It'll also typically shrink as the kernel uses unused memory for caching (ZFS ARC).
- Be aware that kstat can report bad data (so can any tool); there isn't really a test suite for kstat data, and engineers can add new code paths and forget to add the counters.
Software Resources
| component | type | metric |
|---|---|---|
| Kernel mutex | utilization | not available from within a zone |
| Kernel mutex | saturation | mpstat "smtx" |
| Kernel mutex | errors | not available from within a zone |
| User mutex | utilization | plockstat -H (held time); DTrace plockstat provider |
| User mutex | saturation | plockstat -C (contention); prstat -mLc 1, "LCK"; DTrace plockstat provider |
| User mutex | errors | DTrace plockstat and pid providers, for EAGAIN, EINVAL, EPERM, EDEADLK, ENOMEM, EOWNERDEAD, ... see pthread_mutex_lock(3C) |
| Process capacity | utilization | kstat, "unix:0:var:v_proc" for system-wide max, system-wide current usage isn't available in a zone, but "unix:0:process_cache:slab_alloc" gives a rough idea; zone: "unix:0:system_misc:nproc" for current zone usage; prctl -n zone.max-processes -i zone ZONE, "privileged/system" for zone max, and "usage" for current usage. |
| Process capacity | saturation | queueing on pidlinklock in pid_allocate(), as it scans for available slots once the table gets full. |
| Process capacity | errors | "can't fork()" messages |
| Thread capacity | utilization | user-level: prctl -n zone.max-lwps -i zone ZONE, "privileged/system" for zone max, and "usage" for current zone usage; kernel: limited by system memory - see memory usage. |
| Thread capacity | saturation | threads blocking on memory allocation - see memory cap usage. |
| Thread capacity | errors | user-level: pthread_create() failures with EAGAIN, EINVAL, ...; kernel: not available from within a zone |
| File descriptors | utilization | system-wide (no limit other than RAM); per-process: pfiles vs ulimit or prctl -t basic -n process.max-file-descriptor PID; a quicker check than pfiles is ls /proc/PID/fd | wc -l |
| File descriptors | saturation | I don't think there is any queueing or blocking, other than on memory allocation. |
| File descriptors | errors | truss or DTrace (better) to look for errno == EMFILE on syscalls returning fds (eg, open(), accept(), ...). |
- plockstat often drop events due to load; I often roll my own to avoid this using the DTrace plockstat provider (examples in the DTrace book).
- File descriptor utilization: while other OSes have a system-wide limit, Solaris doesn't (at least at the moment, this could change; see my writeup about it).
What's Next
See the USE Method for the follow-up strategies after identifying a possible bottleneck. If you complete this checklist but still have a performance issue, move onto other strategies: drill-down analysis and latency analysis.
Also see the Solaris Performance Checklist if you have access to the physical host (global zone).