The Case of the Mysteriously High System Load

Have you ever wanted to know “Where is the bottleneck in my distributed system/microservices/job queue?” This talk will level up your detective skills for investigating software systems performance problems.

PLUM BAGO INVESTIGATES: The development team is making steady progress on the new software release, when suddenly the staging server is found slumped on the floor. System load is sky-high and database writes are backing up in a troubling fashion. A workload that could previously be handled easily is now choking the application. Several logs witnessed the attack but none could identify a culprit. A crack team of expert detectives is assembled to solve the case - and everyone has their own pet theory. Suspects include The Network, The Messaging Queue, The Database, The Software Configuration and the well-known fugitive, SSL. Detective Plum Bago is the head sleuth charged with solving the case.

When attempted murder of a software application’s performance is the crime, and logs are not enough to identify a culprit, how can an investigator enable the victim to speak up and provide clues? If it’s no longer premature to optimise, how can metrics be extracted across a complex application? Join Plum on a journey towards understanding and justice.