Back to Basics: Least Connections is Not Least Loaded

Workload analysis can be performed in a number of ways - there's of course CPU and memory load, but there's also network connections (database call utilization) and other calls out to dependent services that can be tracked using fairly standard network analysis tools (even netstat will help here).

 

 

Instrumentation during dev / QA would be most helpful, even dumping method/function timing / memory use during execution to a log file (that can then be analyzed by tools like splunk) can assist in determining what calls are putting what load on the server.

 

 

Profiling tools are also another good option if you're using a language (Java, .NET) that has a good set of options for finding out where time and memory is spent in the code.

 

 

There's no good automatic way of determining workload however, it takes some time to gather all the appropriate statistics and then analysis them holistically to determine load per workload type.

 

 

HTH

 

Lori