Trace Visualization Lab is a two-part lab session that introduces participants to system tracing and trace visualizations that are an invaluable technique to understand in-depth system behavior and reach root-cause of problems faster than just CLI tracing modes. The focus of this lab is on post-mortem analysis (the system failed and we want to understand the root cause). The tutorial first introduces attendees to system tracing, trace collection, storage/aggregation/filtering and eventually visualization techniques such as flamecharts, flamegraphs, timeline views, critical flow view (inter-process flow), container and VM views, resource usage etc).
The introductory sessions (part I) also explain why and when is systems tracing required and its role in supporting related performance analysis techniques such as distributed tracing, profiling, debugging and service log analysis. Various visual techniques will be shown and hands on activities that showcase how different "views" can help in scenarios such as resource contention, latency analysis would be carried out.
For this lab, primary trace collection will be through
LTTng, Perf/Ftrace and primary trace visualization system will be
Trace Compass.
