Monitoring Drizzle or MySQL With DTrace and SystemTap

DTrace and SystemTap are dynamic tracing frameworks available for Solaris and Linux respectively. This session will give an overview of the static DTrace probes available in both Drizzle and MySQL and show numerous examples of scripts that utilize these probes. Mixing dynamic and static probes will also be discussed.

Since DTrace is only available on Solaris and many MySQL/Drizzle installations are on Linux, it is often assumed that static DTrace probes are useless on Linux. However, this presentation will also discuss how SystemTap can now be used on Linux in a manner similar to DTrace. Examples presented using DTrace will be presented using SystemTap.

Topics covered include:

• overview of the static DTrace probes in Drizzle and MySQL
• how to use these probes with DTrace
• example scripts utilizing these static probes
• overview of SystemTap on Linux
• how to use SystemTap with the static DTrace probes
• examples of using SystemTap with the static probes
• how to add static DTrace probes to a plugin

This session is applicable to both Drizzle and MySQL. The presenter was responsible for porting the static DTrace probes from MySQL to Drizzle and is quite familiar with the probes in both MySQL and Drizzle.