Patent Application
20170126580
The World Wide Web has expanded to provide numerous web services to consumers. The web services may be provided by a web application which uses multiple services and applications to handle a transaction. The applications may be distributed over several machines, making the topology of the machines that provide the service more difficult to track and monitor.
Monitoring a web application helps to provide insight regarding bottle necks in communication, communication failures and other information regarding performance of the services that provide the web application. Most application monitoring tools provide a standard report regarding application performance. Though the typical report may be helpful for most users, it may not provide the particular information that an administrator wants to know.
For example, most application performance monitor systems can monitor time it takes for an application to perform a task. This helps provide insight into application performance, but does not provide any information regarding the active or passive time spent by the application. What is needed is an improved method for monitoring the performance of an application.
The present technology, roughly described, tracks and reports contention between two or more threads for a resource such as an object in the course of performing a business transaction. Contention tracking, including an indication of whether a thread that is executing an application is waiting for a desired object or other resource to be unlocked, is reported in the context of a business transaction handled by the particular thread that is using or waiting for resource. As a result, an entire view of the business transaction may be analyzed, including the time spent waiting for another resource to be available. This may enable system administrators to troubleshoot their system in ways not possible before, including determining whether additional objects or resources should be provided to avoid delays for retrieving or obtaining access to that particular object or resource.
An embodiment may include a method for monitoring a business transaction performed by multiple computers. The method begins with sampling by a first agent a thread on a first computer. The first agent may be installed on the first computer, wherein the first computer may be one of a plurality of computers that host an application which processes a business transaction. The business transaction may be performed by applications on the plurality of the computers. The first agent may determine that, based on the sampling, the thread is in waiting for a resource that is locked. Thread wait data and data for the locked resource may be stored. The thread wait data, the locked resource data, and business transaction data may be transmitted by the first agent to a remote server. The remote server may report the thread data with business transaction data received from the first agent and a second agent installed on a second computer of the plurality of computers.
An embodiment may include a system for monitoring a business transaction performed by multiple computers. The system may include a processor, memory, and one or more modules stored in memory and executable by the processor. When executed, the modules may sample by a first agent a thread on a first computer, the first agent installed on the first computer, the first computer one of a plurality of computers that host an application which processes a business transaction, the business transaction performed by applications on the plurality of the computers, determine by the first agent based on the sampling that the thread is in waiting for a resource that is locked, store thread wait data and data for the locked resource, and transmit the thread wait data, the locked resource data, and business transaction data by the first agent to a remote server, the remote server reporting the thread data with business transaction data received from the first agent and a second agent installed on a second computer of the plurality of computers.
The present technology, roughly described, tracks and reports contention between two or more threads for a resource in the course of performing a business transaction. Contention tracking, including an indication of whether a thread that is executing an application is waiting for a desired resource to be unlocked, is reported in the context of a business transaction handled by the particular thread that is using or waiting for resource. A resource may be any element that can be accessed or requested by a thread, including but not limited to an object, hardware component, database, or other resource. As a result, an entire view of the business transaction may be analyzed, including the time spent waiting for another resource to be available. This may enable system administrators to troubleshoot their system in ways not possible before, including determining whether additional objects or resources should be provided to avoid delays for retrieving or obtaining access to that particular object or resource.
Client device 105 may include network browser 110 and be implemented as a computing device, such as for example a laptop, desktop, workstation, or some other computing device. Network browser 110 may be a client application for viewing content provided by an application server, such as application server 130 via network server 125 over network 120.
Network browser 110 may include agent 112. Agent 112 may be installed on network browser 110 and/or client 105 as a network browser add-on, downloading the application to the server, or in some other manner. Agent 112 may be executed to monitor network browser 110, the operation system of client 105, and any other application, API, or other component of client 105. Agent 112 may determine network browser navigation timing metrics, access browser cookies, monitor code, and transmit data to data collection 160, controller 190, or another device. Agent 112 may perform other operations related to monitoring a request or a network at client 105 as discussed herein.
Mobile device 115 is connected to network 120 and may be implemented as a portable device suitable for sending and receiving content over a network, such as for example a mobile phone, smart phone, tablet computer, or other portable device. Both client device 105 and mobile device 115 may include hardware and/or software configured to access a web service provided by network server 125.
Mobile device 115 may include network browser 117 and an agent 119. Mobile device may also include client applications and other code that may be monitored by agent 119. Agent 119 may reside in and/or communicate with network browser 117, as well as communicate with other applications, an operating system, APIs and other hardware and software on mobile device 115. Agent 119 may have similar functionality as that described herein for agent 112 on client 105, and may repot data to data collection server 160 and/or controller 190.
Network 120 may facilitate communication of data between different servers, devices and machines of system 100 (some connections shown with lines to network 120, some not shown). The network may be implemented as a private network, public network, intranet, the Internet, a cellular network, Wi-Fi network, VoIP network, or a combination of one or more of these networks. The network 120 may include one or more machines such as load balance machines and other machines.
Network server 125 is connected to network 120 and may receive and process requests received over network 120. Network server 125 may be implemented as one or more servers implementing a network service, and may be implemented on the same machine as application server 130 or one or more separate machines. When network 120 is the Internet, network server 125 may be implemented as a web server.
Application server 130 communicates with network server 125, application servers 140 and 150, and controller 190. Application server 130 may also communicate with other machines and devices (not illustrated in
Application 132 and other software on application server 130 may be instrumented using byte code insertion, or byte code instrumentation (BCI), to modify the object code of the application or other software. The instrumented object code may include code used to detect calls received by application 132, calls sent by application 132, and communicate with agent 134 during execution of the application. BCI may also be used to monitor one or more sockets of the application and/or application server in order to monitor the socket and capture packets coming over the socket.
In some embodiments, server 130 may include applications and/or code other than a virtual machine. For example, server 130 may include Java code, .Net code, PHP code, Ruby code, C code or other code to implement applications and process requests received from a remote source.
Agents 134 on application server 130 may be installed, downloaded, embedded, or otherwise provided on application server 130. For example, agents 134 may be provided in server 130 by instrumentation of object code, downloading the agents to the server, or in some other manner. Agents 134 may be executed to monitor application server 130, monitor code running in a or a virtual machine 132 (or other program language, such as a PHP, .Net, or C program), machine resources, network layer data, and communicate with byte instrumented code on application server 130 and one or more applications on application server 130.
Each of agents 134, 144, 154 and 164 may include one or more agents, such as a language agents, machine agents, and network agents. A language agent may be a type of agent that is suitable to run on a particular host. Examples of language agents include a JAVA agent, .Net agent, PHP agent, and other agents. The machine agent may collect data from a particular machine on which it is installed. A network agent may capture network information, such as data collected from a socket. Agents are discussed in more detail below with respect to
Agent 134 may detect operations such as receiving calls and sending requests by application server 130, resource usage, and incoming packets. Agent 134 may receive data, process the data, for example by aggregating data into metrics, and transmit the data and/or metrics to controller 190. Agent 134 may perform other operations related to monitoring applications and application server 130 as discussed herein. For example, agent 134 may identify other applications, share business transaction data, aggregate detected runtime data, and other operations.
An agent may operate to monitor a node, tier or nodes or other entity. A node may be a software program or a hardware component (e.g., memory, processor, and so on). A tier of nodes may include a plurality of nodes which may process a similar business transaction, may be located on the same server, may be associated with each other in some other way, or may not be associated with each other.
A language agent may be an agent suitable to instrument or modify, collect data from, and reside on a host. The host may be a Java, PHP, .Net, Node.JS, or other type of platform. Language agent 220 may collect flow data as well as data associated with the execution of a particular application. The language agent may instrument the lowest level of the application to gather the flow data. The flow data may indicate which tier is communicating which with which tier and on which port. In some instances, the flow data collected from the language agent includes a source IP, a source port, a destination IP, and a destination port. The language agent may report the application data and call chain data to a controller. The language agent may report the collected flow data associated with a particular application to network agent 230.
A network agent may be a standalone agent that resides on the host and collects network flow group data. The network flow group data may include a source IP, destination port, destination IP, and protocol information for network flow received by an application on which network agent 230 is installed. The network agent 230 may collect data by intercepting and performing packet capture on packets coming in from a one or more sockets. The network agent may receive flow data from a language agent that is associated with applications to be monitored. For flows in the flow group data that match flow data provided by the language agent, the network agent rolls up the flow data to determine metrics such as TCP throughput, TCP loss, latency and bandwidth. The network agent may then reports the metrics, flow group data, and call chain data to a controller. The network agent may also make system calls at an application server to determine system information, such as for example a host status check, a network status check, socket status, and other information.
A machine agent may reside on the host and collect information regarding the machine which implements the host. A machine agent may collect and generate metrics from information such as processor usage, memory usage, and other hardware information.
Each of the language agent, network agent, and machine agent may report data to the controller. Controller 210 may be implemented as a remote server that communicates with agents located on one or more servers or machines. The controller may receive metrics, call chain data and other data, correlate the received data as part of a distributed transaction, and report the correlated data in the context of a distributed application implemented by one or more monitored applications and occurring over one or more monitored networks. The controller may provide reports, one or more user interfaces, and other information for a user.
Agent 134 may create a request identifier for a request received by server 130 (for example, a request received by a client 105 or 115 associated with a user or another source). The request identifier may be sent to client 105 or mobile device 115, whichever device sent the request. In embodiments, the request identifier may be created when a data is collected and analyzed for a particular business transaction. Additional information regarding collecting data for analysis is discussed in U.S. patent application no. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 12/878,919, titled “Monitoring Distributed Web Application Transactions,” filed on Sep. 9, 2010, U.S. Pat. No. 8,938,533, titled “Automatic Capture of Diagnostic Data Based on Transaction Behavior Learning,” filed on Jul. 22, 2011, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/365,171, titled “Automatic Capture of Detailed Analysis Information for Web Application Outliers with Very Low Overhead,” filed on Feb. 2, 2012, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Each of application servers 140, 150 and 160 may include an application and agents. Each application may run on the corresponding application server. Each of applications 142, 152 and 162 on application servers 140-160 may operate similarly to application 132 and perform at least a portion of a distributed business transaction. Agents 144, 154 and 164 may monitor applications 142-162, collect and process data at runtime, and communicate with controller 190. The applications 132, 142, 152 and 162 may communicate with each other as part of performing a distributed transaction. In particular each application may call any application or method of another virtual machine.
Asynchronous network machine 170 may engage in asynchronous communications with one or more application servers, such as application server 150 and 160. For example, application server 150 may transmit several calls or messages to an asynchronous network machine. Rather than communicate back to application server 150, the asynchronous network machine may process the messages and eventually provide a response, such as a processed message, to application server 160. Because there is no return message from the asynchronous network machine to application server 150, the communications between them are asynchronous.
Data stores 180 and 185 may each be accessed by application servers such as application server 150. Data store 185 may also be accessed by application server 150. Each of data stores 180 and 185 may store data, process data, and return queries received from an application server. Each of data stores 180 and 185 may or may not include an agent.
Controller 190 may control and manage monitoring of business transactions distributed over application servers 130-160. In some embodiments, controller 190 may receive application data, including data associated with monitoring client requests at client 105 and mobile device 115, from data collection server 160. In some embodiments, controller 190 may receive application monitoring data and network data from each of agents 112, 119, 134, 144 and 154. Controller 190 may associate portions of business transaction data, communicate with agents to configure collection of data, and provide performance data and reporting through an interface. The interface may be viewed as a web-based interface viewable by client device 192, which may be a mobile device, client device, or any other platform for viewing an interface provided by controller 190. In some embodiments, a client device 192 may directly communicate with controller 190 to view an interface for monitoring data.
Client device 192 may include any computing device, including a mobile device or a client computer such as a desktop, work station or other computing device. Client computer 192 may communicate with controller 190 to create and view a custom interface. In some embodiments, controller 190 provides an interface for creating and viewing the custom interface as a content page, e.g., a web page, which may be provided to and rendered through a network browser application on client device 192.
Applications 132, 142, 152 and 162 may be any of several types of applications. Examples of applications that may implement applications 132-162 include a Java, PHP, .Net, Node.JS, and other applications.
Applications may be monitored by agents executing on the particular machine at step 220. The agents may monitor the application execution as well as performance of the machine on which the application is executed. The agents may monitor application performance, application and resource execution start time and stop time, as well as the threads handling the resource and application execution.
Business transaction, application, and machine data may be collected by one or more agents on a particular machine at step 230. The data may be collected, aggregated, and stored locally by the agents. The collected business transaction data may include information about the business transaction, including identification information, call chain data that identifies a string of applications that has been called in the past as part of executing a business transaction, and other information. In some instances, a portion of a call chain may be generated or modified, such as by adding the current application to the string of applications listed in the call chain, on the fly and maintained by agents as an application receives calls from other applications and makes calls to other applications and machines.
Resource contention data may be collected by an agent at step 240. When a resource is being executed by a first thread, it may cause a delay for another thread that needs to access the same resource. When this occurs, the two threads both contend for the same resource, one thread will be granted access to the resource, the resource will be locked while the granted thread uses the resource, and the other thread will be forced to wait until the thread granted access is done with the resource. Data collected for resource contention may include but is not limited to identification of the thread which has a lock on the resource, the thread which requests access to the locked resource, information about the resource itself. The contention data may be stored locally by the agent. More detail with respect to step 240 is discussed with respect to the method of
Data collected by the agent may be reported to a remote server at step 250. The reported data may include business transaction data, application data, machine data, and resource contention data. The data may be reported in terms of a call graph from one or more agents to the controller (i.e., the remote server). For instance, the agents in the system of
Data received by controller 190 may be analyzed and reported at step 260. Reported data may include business transaction performance data that includes contention tracking data. The contention tracking data may allow an administrator to see how a particular business transaction performed in view of resources that were requested but not readily available, causing that particular business transaction to wait until the resource was available. More detail for step 260 is discussed with respect to the method of
A determination is made at step 320 that a thread is in a wait state. The wait state may be determined from the thread stack data collected at step 310. In particular, the thread may indicate it is the waiting access to a particular resource that has been requested by the thread.
Data for the resource under lock by another thread and identification information for the thread that owns the lock on the resource may be retrieved at step 330. This data may be retrieved from the thread at step 310 or by an additional request at some other time. The data for the resource under lock may include the name of the resource as well as a line of code at which the resource exists. The locking thread may include information about the thread that is access to the resource when the current thread request the access to that resource. The retrieved data may be inserted into a call graph by the agent at step 330. The call graph may indicate a series of calls made by the thread as part of execution of the current business transaction. The call graph may indicate a hierarchy of calls, such as a root call by the thread to a first resource, calls made by that resources to other resources, and so forth as part of the hierarchy that comprises a series of calls that form the business transaction. Information regarding the wait time that a thread experiences before being allowed access to a particular resource is inserted into the call graph at step 330.
Business transaction data that includes contention tracking data is reported by the controller at step 430. The business transaction data may include response time, resource loading time, database access time, and other data associated with the performance of a business transaction carried out over a distributed set of application servers. With respect to the contention tracking data, information regarding weight times experienced by a thread while trying to access and resource may be reported as part of the business transaction performance data.
Contention information is provided through shaded portions within a business transaction indicator and arrows that associate the shaded portion with another business transaction. For example, business transaction indicator 620 includes shaded portion 622. This indicates that business transaction 620 waited for a resource locked by another thread for a time period represented by the shaded portion 622. The arrow extending from shaded portion 622 from business transaction indicator 622 to business transaction indicator 640 indicates that the wait time represented by shaded portion 622 is due to thread T113 having a lock on the particular resource. In particular, thread T113 has a lock on the resource required by thread T111 to execute business transaction 620 when T113 was executing business transaction 640. Similarly, the arrow from business transaction indicator 660, in particular the shaded portion 662, indicates that business transaction 660 waited for a time associated with shaded portion 662 for business transaction 622 to use and release a resource owned by a thread T111.
Additional contention data may be provided to a user within graphical user interface of
The components shown in
Mass storage device 630, which may be implemented with a magnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, a flash drive, or other device, is a non-volatile storage device for storing data and instructions for use by processor unit 610. Mass storage device 630 can store the system software for implementing embodiments of the present invention for purposes of loading that software into main memory 620.
Portable storage device 640 operates in conjunction with a portable non-volatile storage medium, such as a floppy disk, compact disk or Digital video disc, USB drive, memory card or stick, or other portable or removable memory, to input and output data and code to and from the computer system 600 of
Input devices 660 provide a portion of a user interface. Input devices 660 may include an alpha-numeric keypad, such as a keyboard, for inputting alpha-numeric and other information, a pointing device such as a mouse, a trackball, stylus, cursor direction keys, microphone, touch-screen, accelerometer, and other input devices Additionally, the system 600 as shown in
Display system 670 may include a liquid crystal display (LCD) or other suitable display device. Display system 670 receives textual and graphical information, and processes the information for output to the display device. Display system 670 may also receive input as a touch-screen.
Peripherals 680 may include any type of computer support device to add additional functionality to the computer system. For example, peripheral device(s) 680 may include a modem or a router, printer, and other device.
The system of 600 may also include, in some implementations, antennas, radio transmitters and radio receivers 690. The antennas and radios may be implemented in devices such as smart phones, tablets, and other devices that may communicate wirelessly. The one or more antennas may operate at one or more radio frequencies suitable to send and receive data over cellular networks, Wi-Fi networks, commercial device networks such as a Bluetooth devices, and other radio frequency networks. The devices may include one or more radio transmitters and receivers for processing signals sent and received using the antennas.
The components contained in the computer system 600 of
The foregoing detailed description of the technology herein has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the technology to the precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teaching. The described embodiments were chosen in order to best explain the principles of the technology and its practical application to thereby enable others skilled in the art to best utilize the technology in various embodiments and with various modifications as are suited to the particular use contemplated. It is intended that the scope of the technology be defined by the claims appended hereto.
