oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/omicron

Telemetry capture gaps/wishlist for per-vCPU overhead calculations

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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:

  1. Global-zone CPU attribution. zone:cpu_nsec reports 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.
  2. 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.)
  3. Split emulation into kern/user. Kstat has time_emu_kern / time_emu_user; vcpu_usage collapses them. In-kernel vs propolis-userspace matters for optimization targeting. This is already collected, just merged.
  4. OPTE/xde port metrics. Nothing between instance_network_interface and sled_data_link: softring drops, flow/route-cache occupancy, encap throughput would be helpful. Networking investigations needed on-sled kstat/opteadm. Viona ring stats likewise.
  5. Crucible latency below the guest view. virtual_disk:io_latency hit a knee during testing; but crucible_upstairs:* is counts/bytes only, downstairs has nothing, so it wasn't possible to localize the knee.
  6. vmm reservoir utilization. vmm_reservoir:bytes_alloc / bytes_free exist in kstat but are absent from oximeter. This is a basic capacity signal for an operator.
  7. 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).

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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

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