Sentinel: Understanding Data Systems
Brad Glasbergen, Michael Abebe, Khuzaima Daudjee, Daniel Vogel, Jian Zhao · 2020
The complexity of modern data systems and applications greatly increases the challenge in understanding system behaviour and diagnosing performance problems. When these problems arise, system administrators are left with the difficult task of remedying them by relying on large debug log files, vast numbers of metrics, and system-specific tooling. We demonstrate the Sentinel system, which enables administrators to analyze systems and applications by building models of system execution and comparing them to derive key differences in behaviour. The resulting analyses are then presented as system reports to administrators and developers in an intuitive fashion. Users of Sentinel can locate, identify and take steps to resolve the reported performance issues. As Sentinel's models are constructed online by intercepting debug logging library calls, Sentinel's functionality incurs little overhead and works with all systems that use standard debug logging libraries.