Distributed performance monitoring: methods, tools, and applications

A method for analyzing the functional behavior and the performance of programs in distributed systems is presented. We use hybrid monitoring, a technique which combines advantages of both software monitoring and hardware monitoring. The paper contains a description of a hardware monitor and a software package (ZM4/SIMPLE) which make our concepts available to programmers, assisting them in debugging and tuning of their code. A short survey of related monitor systems highlights the distinguishing features of our implementation. As an application of our monitoring and evaluation system, the analysis of a parallel ray tracing program running on the SUPRENUM multiprocessor is described. It is shown that monitoring and modeling both rely on a common abstraction of a system's dynamic behavior and therefore can be integrated to one comprehensive methodology. This methodology is supported by a set of tools.>