4 ms·

It's enormously frustrating to me that the Windows platform is so far behind. I've been researching for a rebuild of our ecommerce site with the idea of a mode

It's enormously frustrating to me that the Windows platform is so far behind. I've been researching for a rebuild of our ecommerce site with the idea of a modern microservice architecture. Team skillset and some other considerations dictate a .Net environment. Netflix and other companies have created a really rich platform, between logging and monitoring technologies like this; message queueing; deployment; and so on. In the Windows environment there's precious little to compare to. One bright spot is the news story also on HN today [1] about MS announcing Docker-related Hyper-V technology - but in the next version of Windows server. It might be that to satisfy those .Net compatibility wishes, we just go to Mono and do everything else in Linux. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9342369

voltagex_ 12y ago
I suspect that you could extend PCP (the monitoring component of this dashboard) to support Windows' performance counters. The profiling capabilities are certainly there.
- nathan_scott 12y ago
  PCP can export many hundreds of Windows-specific counters (which it accesses via the PDH APIs). The Windows build does need some love though, as the OP mentioned - its out of date and needs a regular contributor to bring it up to date with the latest PCP sources. Then Vector should Just Work (tm) for Windows servers too.
tonyarkles 12y ago
> Team skillset and some other considerations dictate a .Net environment. Not to be a dick but... that doesn't sound like a Windows limitation.
dkhenry 12y ago
So I haven't looked into all the metrics that they are getting off of PCP but from an initial glance it doesn't look like they are getting a lot more information then you get off net-snmp. In this one case the windows platform isn't going to hold you back too much. On top of that anything the .net stack on windows gives you access to WMI which can give you really simple really deep data from your application. Don't buy into too much hype on what some of the big guys are doing on monitoring, most of their challenges seem to be around the scale they are monitoring at not with the depth of metrics.
- brendangregg 12y ago
  For the initial release, you are right that you'll find most of these metrics in net-snmp. It's the selection that's more interesting, which is guided by the USE method: identifying utilization, saturation, and error metrics for key resources. We're missing some metrics (so do all monitoring tools), and we'll be extending Vector to include them (as can other people, as it's open source). One challenge is that there are some metrics that the kernel doesn't make available, so we need to either use tracers to fetch them, patch the kernel, or use custom kernel modules. In recent weeks, I've been using (or trying to use): ftrace, perf_events, SystemTap, eBPF, and LTTng. I've also used others, but not in the last few weeks. I'm really looking forward to getting these advanced tools into Vector.
yareally 12y ago
> Netflix and other companies have created a really rich platform, between logging and monitoring technologies like this; message queueing; deployment; and so on. In the Windows environment there's precious little to compare to. Have you looked at any of the following for the various gripes you mentioned? I came from a primarily Linux background until recently, but I know .net and Windows have good tooling that extends beyond my modest list below. Looking to Microsoft to provide every option is probably not the best way to go about it, not sure if that was mostly what you were looking at so far. https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-windows.html https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-windows.html (company I work for uses it for messaging between their services) http://nlog-project.org/ http://nlog-project.org/ (we also use that as a base framework for our logging) http://getakka.net/ http://getakka.net/ (never used it on .net but can't do without it in the jvm) https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans (sort of like Akka, but with additional features) https://github.com/MSOpenTech/Redis https://github.com/MSOpenTech/Redis (it's a bit behind the nix version, but still well maintained) https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg577609.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg577609.aspx (Netflix uses the Java port of that, fyi) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.as... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Monitor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Monitor https://www.jetbrains.com/dotmemory/ https://www.jetbrains.com/dotmemory/ https://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/ https://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/ http://www.appveyor.com/ http://www.appveyor.com/ (great for CI and easy to set up) https://www.cygwin.com/ https://www.cygwin.com/ (when you miss a nix shell and tools) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell (for everything cygwin can't do easily)
wantab 12y ago
The web was built, and runs on, *nix/BSD. Windows is an outlier. Windows can't even get the slashes going the right way. There's a reason 80% of internet traffic does not use Windows.
- SEJeff 12y ago
  Likely more than that seeing as how the majority of the load balancers and many of the routers / switches out there run some form of BSD (netscalar) or Linux (Arista), etc.
- CWuestefeld 12y ago
  I'm not sure how that was supposed to be helpful. I also don't think it's strictly true. For sure the underlying networking came from Unix. But as for the web itself, once we got to real dynamic content, it seems to me that Microsoft were the ones that got things moving. While the Unix world was mired in the awful world of CGI, Microsoft gave us high-performance ISAPI, and then Cold Fusion (also on the Windows platform) and Microsoft's ASP made programming a little more sane. While the Unix world tried to deal with JSP (which IMHO wasn't a very good solution), the Microsoft platform seems to have been the innovators for several years, until Ruby on Rails and then node.js and stuff started coming out. Today, the Apache server powers far more sites than any other, it's true. But IIS shares the 2nd-place spot [1]. When you say "There's a reason 80% of internet traffic does not use Windows", that's pretty much true for the servers, but far off the mark when counting clients. And the reason for that is that Microsoft's strength hasn't historically been radical advances, but in figuring out ways to take the bleeding edge tech that doesn't really work quite right yet, and packaging it into commodity software that may not be as sexy as envisioned by those with the original ideas, but actually useful to the average guy. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/web-servers-microsoft-iis-and-nginx-battle-for-second-place/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/web-servers-microsoft-iis-and-n... EDIT - missing word "world" in 3rd para
  - wantab 12y ago
    Your examples presume there was something better than CGI at the time and the other products are better than something else. For one, I wouldn't be caught dead using any of the products you mentioned. You claim IIS by using a ZDNet article from two years ago but the reality is IIS is number three behind Nginx and Apache. Still, being a distant #2 is nothing to brag about. Now you're trying to claim clients are what powers the web but that's not the topic. What an amateur uses does not define what the professional uses. And to claim not wanting to be on the bleeding edge of things is no excuse for falling behind. Firefox and Chrome knocked IE off its perch years ago by being on the bleeding edge.
AloisMayr 12y ago
Want to try https://ruxit.com https://ruxit.com for monitoring your .NET ecommerce shop on Windows? It also monitors your host and real user interactions with your site.

voltagex_ 12y ago

I suspect that you could extend PCP (the monitoring component of this dashboard) to support Windows' performance counters. The profiling capabilities are certainly there.

nathan_scott 12y ago
PCP can export many hundreds of Windows-specific counters (which it accesses via the PDH APIs). The Windows build does need some love though, as the OP mentioned - its out of date and needs a regular contributor to bring it up to date with the latest PCP sources. Then Vector should Just Work (tm) for Windows servers too.

tonyarkles 12y ago

> Team skillset and some other considerations dictate a .Net environment. Not to be a dick but... that doesn't sound like a Windows limitation.

dkhenry 12y ago

So I haven't looked into all the metrics that they are getting off of PCP but from an initial glance it doesn't look like they are getting a lot more information then you get off net-snmp. In this one case the windows platform isn't going to hold you back too much. On top of that anything the .net stack on windows gives you access to WMI which can give you really simple really deep data from your application. Don't buy into too much hype on what some of the big guys are doing on monitoring, most of their challenges seem to be around the scale they are monitoring at not with the depth of metrics.

brendangregg 12y ago
For the initial release, you are right that you'll find most of these metrics in net-snmp. It's the selection that's more interesting, which is guided by the USE method: identifying utilization, saturation, and error metrics for key resources. We're missing some metrics (so do all monitoring tools), and we'll be extending Vector to include them (as can other people, as it's open source). One challenge is that there are some metrics that the kernel doesn't make available, so we need to either use tracers to fetch them, patch the kernel, or use custom kernel modules. In recent weeks, I've been using (or trying to use): ftrace, perf_events, SystemTap, eBPF, and LTTng. I've also used others, but not in the last few weeks. I'm really looking forward to getting these advanced tools into Vector.

yareally 12y ago

> Netflix and other companies have created a really rich platform, between logging and monitoring technologies like this; message queueing; deployment; and so on. In the Windows environment there's precious little to compare to. Have you looked at any of the following for the various gripes you mentioned? I came from a primarily Linux background until recently, but I know .net and Windows have good tooling that extends beyond my modest list below. Looking to Microsoft to provide every option is probably not the best way to go about it, not sure if that was mostly what you were looking at so far. https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-windows.html https://www.rabbitmq.com/install-windows.html (company I work for uses it for messaging between their services) http://nlog-project.org/ http://nlog-project.org/ (we also use that as a base framework for our logging) http://getakka.net/ http://getakka.net/ (never used it on .net but can't do without it in the jvm) https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans https://github.com/dotnet/Orleans (sort of like Akka, but with additional features) https://github.com/MSOpenTech/Redis https://github.com/MSOpenTech/Redis (it's a bit behind the nix version, but still well maintained) https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg577609.aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/data/gg577609.aspx (Netflix uses the Java port of that, fyi) https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.as... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Monitor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Monitor https://www.jetbrains.com/dotmemory/ https://www.jetbrains.com/dotmemory/ https://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/ https://www.jetbrains.com/profiler/ http://www.appveyor.com/ http://www.appveyor.com/ (great for CI and easy to set up) https://www.cygwin.com/ https://www.cygwin.com/ (when you miss a nix shell and tools) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell (for everything cygwin can't do easily)

wantab 12y ago

The web was built, and runs on, *nix/BSD. Windows is an outlier. Windows can't even get the slashes going the right way. There's a reason 80% of internet traffic does not use Windows.

SEJeff 12y ago
Likely more than that seeing as how the majority of the load balancers and many of the routers / switches out there run some form of BSD (netscalar) or Linux (Arista), etc.
CWuestefeld 12y ago
I'm not sure how that was supposed to be helpful. I also don't think it's strictly true. For sure the underlying networking came from Unix. But as for the web itself, once we got to real dynamic content, it seems to me that Microsoft were the ones that got things moving. While the Unix world was mired in the awful world of CGI, Microsoft gave us high-performance ISAPI, and then Cold Fusion (also on the Windows platform) and Microsoft's ASP made programming a little more sane. While the Unix world tried to deal with JSP (which IMHO wasn't a very good solution), the Microsoft platform seems to have been the innovators for several years, until Ruby on Rails and then node.js and stuff started coming out. Today, the Apache server powers far more sites than any other, it's true. But IIS shares the 2nd-place spot [1]. When you say "There's a reason 80% of internet traffic does not use Windows", that's pretty much true for the servers, but far off the mark when counting clients. And the reason for that is that Microsoft's strength hasn't historically been radical advances, but in figuring out ways to take the bleeding edge tech that doesn't really work quite right yet, and packaging it into commodity software that may not be as sexy as envisioned by those with the original ideas, but actually useful to the average guy. [1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/web-servers-microsoft-iis-and-nginx-battle-for-second-place/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/web-servers-microsoft-iis-and-n... EDIT - missing word "world" in 3rd para
- wantab 12y ago
  Your examples presume there was something better than CGI at the time and the other products are better than something else. For one, I wouldn't be caught dead using any of the products you mentioned. You claim IIS by using a ZDNet article from two years ago but the reality is IIS is number three behind Nginx and Apache. Still, being a distant #2 is nothing to brag about. Now you're trying to claim clients are what powers the web but that's not the topic. What an amateur uses does not define what the professional uses. And to claim not wanting to be on the bleeding edge of things is no excuse for falling behind. Firefox and Chrome knocked IE off its perch years ago by being on the bleeding edge.

AloisMayr 12y ago

Want to try https://ruxit.com https://ruxit.com for monitoring your .NET ecommerce shop on Windows? It also monitors your host and real user interactions with your site.