Precise Request Tracing and Performance Debugging for Multi-tier Services of Black Boxes
Zhihong Zhang, Jianfeng Zhan, Yong Li, Lei Wang, Dan Meng, Bo Sang

TL;DR
This paper introduces PreciseTracer, a tool for accurate request tracing in multi-tier black-box services, enabling effective performance debugging without relying on protocol knowledge.
Contribution
It proposes a novel, application-independent request tracing algorithm and a component activity graph abstraction for end-to-end performance debugging.
Findings
Low overhead and noise tolerance in PreciseTracer
Effective debugging of multi-tier black-box services
Improved request tracing accuracy without protocol knowledge
Abstract
As more and more multi-tier services are developed from commercial components or heterogeneous middleware without the source code available, both developers and administrators need a precise request tracing tool to help understand and debug performance problems of large concurrent services of black boxes. Previous work fails to resolve this issue in several ways: they either accept the imprecision of probabilistic correlation methods, or rely on knowledge of protocols to isolate requests in pursuit of tracing accuracy. This paper introduces a tool named PreciseTracer to help debug performance problems of multi-tier services of black boxes. Our contributions are two-fold: first, we propose a precise request tracing algorithm for multi-tier services of black boxes, which only uses application-independent knowledge; secondly, we present a component activity graph abstraction to represent…
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