oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/omicron
Telemetry capture gaps/wishlist for per-vCPU overhead calculations
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- Dominant language
- Rust
- Stars
- 572
- Forks
- 97
- Avg merge
- 2d 12h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 96
Description
While characterizing per-vCPU overhead on a rack, I tried to account for every lost cycle from telemetry alone. vcpu_usage, sled_cpu:cpu_nsec, and zone:cpu_nsec got ~90% there, retroactively and with no host access. The gaps below forced on-sled kstat/prstat or left numbers unmeasurable, ordered by impact:
- Global-zone CPU attribution.
zone:cpu_nsecreports the global zone as a single bucket, so platform work inside it (viona, xde, ZFS, kernel net) is indistinguishable. Coarse kthread-group attribution would close the biggest gap. - Effective CPU frequency (APERF/MPERF). Per-vCPU compute swings weren't visible in any counter. Clocks are cheap to sample and would expose the frequency share. (Memory-bandwidth counters are similar but lower priority.)
- Split emulation into kern/user. Kstat has
time_emu_kern/time_emu_user;vcpu_usagecollapses them. In-kernel vs propolis-userspace matters for optimization targeting. This is already collected, just merged. - OPTE/xde port metrics. Nothing between
instance_network_interfaceandsled_data_link: softring drops, flow/route-cache occupancy, encap throughput would be helpful. Networking investigations needed on-sled kstat/opteadm. Viona ring stats likewise. - Crucible latency below the guest view.
virtual_disk:io_latencyhit a knee during testing; butcrucible_upstairs:*is counts/bytes only, downstairs has nothing, so it wasn't possible to localize the knee. - vmm reservoir utilization.
vmm_reservoir:bytes_alloc/bytes_freeexist in kstat but are absent from oximeter. This is a basic capacity signal for an operator. - OxQL DX: true per-second rates. Aligned cumulatives yield per-sample-interval deltas, and intervals differ per series (~5 s vs ~9 s). Cross-series math needs out-of-band knowledge. A rate() equivalent (or docs if it exists) would be prudent. Nit: there was no CLI verb for system-scoped queries (
sled_cpu/ zone need raw oxide api/v1/system/timeseries/query).
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by narrowing the wishlist to one area, then inspect the named telemetry sources such as vcpu_usage, zone:cpu_nsec, vmm_reservoir, and OxQL’s system-scoped query endpoint. The issue does not identify files or tests; completion would require an agreed scope, implementation or documentation for that gap, and measurements showing the requested signal is available and usable.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- rust
- Domain
- api, observability, performance
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Activity status
- Quiet
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 28/100