Profiler in Service Config

Profiler in a Service Config

To help troubleshoot performance issues resulting in high CPU usage, Itential Automation Platform (IAP) has a built-in profiler based on:

• V8.dev profiling
• simple-profiling

Profiling can be enabled in IAP, along with select applications and adapters in IAP release version 2020.1 and later.

Note: This feature should not impose any security limitations; however, Itential strongly recommends this feature is not enabled for production deployment due to possible performance impacts.

Prerequisites

• Must have write permission to the working directory to create profiling logs.

How to enable profiling in IAP

To set profiling in IAP:

1. When running IAP in a Docker environment, use the following to set profiling in the /docker/startContainer.

   set `PHCORE_PROFILING=true`
   

2. When running IAP directly in shell, use the --prof CLI option.

   sudo -u pronghorn node --prof server.js
   

How to enable profiling for adapters/applications

To enable profiling for adapters and applications running on a development server:

1. Go to Admin Essentials.
2. Expand the Applications or Adapters collections menu (left sidebar)and select the appropriate adapter/application.
3. From the Configuration tab, switch the toggle (upper-right) to turn-on the Advanced View and display the Service Config editor.
4. Profiling of select applications/adapters can be enabled (and disabled) by directly editing its configuration (see example below).
5. Once the profiling feature is enabled/disabled, click save and restart the application/adapter for the change to take effect.

Example: Profiling Enabled for NSO Manager

Pictured below is an example of profiling enabled for the NSO Manager application.

How to process profiler logs

The profiler will gather (log) all data in a file that can be found in the working directory as isolate-*-v8.log.

Example: Profiling Logs

To process the profiler logs into a user-friendly pretty-format, simply use the Node.js --prof-process CLI option.

node --prof-process isolate-0x5589eb9afae0-v8.log > isolate-0x5589eb9afae0-v8-PRETTY.log

Profiling info can then be inspected by opening the log file in your preferred editor/viewer.

How to remove profiler logs

Once you've analyzed all profile data, remember to remove the profiling log files to save disk space.