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http://blogs.sun.com/timc/date/20090917 Thursday September 17, 2009

querystat - DTrace script to monitor your queries, query cache and server thread pre-emption

I was recently helping some colleagues check what was happening with their MySQL queries, and wrote a DTrace script to do it. Time to share that script.

First of all, a look at some output from the script: 

mashie[bash]# ./querystat.d -p `pgrep mysqld`
Tracing started at 2009 Sep 17 16:28:35
2009 Sep 17 16:28:38   throughput 3 queries/sec
2009 Sep 17 16:28:41   throughput 4 queries/sec
2009 Sep 17 16:28:44   throughput 528 queries/sec
2009 Sep 17 16:28:47   throughput 1603 queries/sec
2009 Sep 17 16:28:50   throughput 1676 queries/sec
^C
Tracing ended   at 2009 Sep 17 16:28:51
Average latency, all queries: 107 us
Latency distribution, all queries (us): 
           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
              16 |                                         0        
              32 |@@                                       170      
              64 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@        3728     
             128 |@@@@@                                    533      
             256 |                                         26       
             512 |                                         18       
            1024 |                                         2        
            2048 |                                         1        
            4096 |                                         0        
            8192 |                                         1        
           16384 |                                         1        
           32768 |                                         0        
Query cache statistics:
    count             hit: 6
    count            miss: 4474
    avg latency      miss: 107 (us)
    avg latency       hit: 407 (us)
Latency distribution, for query cache hit (us): 
           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
              64 |                                         0        
             128 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@                            2        
             256 |@@@@@@@                                  1        
             512 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@                     3        
            1024 |                                         0        
Latency distribution, for query cache miss (us): 
           value  ------------- Distribution ------------- count    
              16 |                                         0        
              32 |@@                                       170      
              64 |@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@        3728     
             128 |@@@@@                                    531      
             256 |                                         25       
             512 |                                         15       
            1024 |                                         2        
            2048 |                                         1        
            4096 |                                         0        
            8192 |                                         1        
           16384 |                                         1        
           32768 |                                         0        
Average latency when query WAS NOT pre-empted: 73 us
Average latency when query     WAS pre-empted: 127 us
Pre-emptors:
[...]
   mysql                                     6
   Xorg                                     18
   sched                                    25
   firefox-bin                              44
   sysbench                               3095

You can see that while the script is running (prior to pressing <Ctrl>-C), we get a throughput count every 3 seconds.

Then we get some totals, some averages, and even some distribution histograms, covering all queries, then with breakdowns on whether we used the query cache, and whether the thread executing the query was pre-empted.

This may be useful for determining things like:

  • Do I have some queries in my workload that consume a lot more CPU than others?
  • Is the query cache helping or hurting?
  • Are my database server threads being pre-empted (kicked off the CPU) by (an)other process(es)?

Things have become easier since I first tried this, and had to use the PID provider to trace functions in the database server.

If you want to try my DTrace script, get it from here. NOTE: You will need a version of MySQL with DTrace probes for it to work.

Posted at 05:04PM Sep 17, 2009 by timc in MySQL  |  Comments[0]


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