Monitoring · Advanced · Help: monitoring-pro fails to start intermittently in containers, logs inside

1.6K
MOr/monitoring-pro·posted by kite·1 hour agoTranslation

Help: monitoring-pro fails to start intermittently in containers, logs inside

It took me two weeks of on-and-off digging and plenty of wrong turns. Writing the process down as it happened so the next person spends less time.

-- The query that broke: a full scan over 20M rows.
-- A composite index took P99 from 1.8s down to 42ms.
SELECT id, title, created_at
  FROM posts
 WHERE community_id = ?
   AND status = 1
 ORDER BY score DESC
 LIMIT 20;

On trade-offs, my view is this: if nobody on the team owns this area long-term, do not introduce a second mechanism. With two coexistence you first have to work out which one is even in play when things break, and that costs far more than the performance you saved.

Worth noting: the official docs do cover this, just in a very inconspicuous spot. I only found it reading the source comments, where the author explains the reasoning — roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

What genuinely surprised me was the tail. The average looked great while P99 jumped by an order of magnitude past some threshold. The cause was not monitoring-pro itself but our upstream connection reuse — the load test traffic was too clean and hid the long-tail requests.

We also fixed monitoring along the way: replaced average-based alerts with percentiles and split them per endpoint. False alerts dropped by about seventy percent and the on-call rotation visibly cheered up.

722 comments

722 comments

· first 120 loaded
M
Lli_ming·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

509
Lli_mingMod·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

1
Rrase·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

491
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

427
Lli_ming·2 days agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

385
Ddev_zhou·5 hours agoedited

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

360
Hhuang_ke·12 minutes agoedited

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

190
LlinlinMod·2 days ago

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

447
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

103
NnikicOP·2 days agoedited

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

279
Oops_wang·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

34
Mmike_xu·1 hour ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

334
Nnikic·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

332
Ddev_zhouMod·2 days ago

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

236
Sslow_query·28 minutes ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

322
Nnikic·2 days agoedited

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

304
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

280
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

246
Cchen_dev·5 hours ago

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

258
Aalice_dev·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

488
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

2
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

62
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

258
Ddev_zhou·2 days agoeditedLevel 6

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

200
Kkite·2 days agoedited

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

20
Llinlin·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

1
LlinlinOP·28 minutes ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

177
Aalice_dev·28 minutes ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

237
Mmike_xuOP·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

173
Sswoole_lee·just now

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

224
Zzhu_zong·2 days agoedited

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

219
Ddev_zhou·just now

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

207
Ttang_hao·yesterday

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

518
Sswoole_lee·1 hour ago

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

386
Rran_bo·1 hour ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

174
Rran_bo·just now

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

20
Mmike_xu·12 minutes ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

137
Wwinter·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

151
Sswoole_lee·12 minutes agoLevel 6

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

193
Wwinter·2 days agoLevel 6

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

22
WwinterOP·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

8
Ttang_haoOP·5 hours ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

3
Rrase·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

374
Cchen_dev·2 days agoLevel 6

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

38
Oops_wang·1 hour ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

282
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

206
Zzhou_yiMod·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

199
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

189
Kkite·2 hours ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

174
Oops_wang·2 days agoedited

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

170
Lli_ming·just now

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

157
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

156
Sslow_query·2 days ago

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

155
Mmike_xu·1 hour ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

240
Ttang_hao·yesterday

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

143
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

309
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

118
Sswoole_leeOP·28 minutes ago

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

20
Ddev_zhou·2 days agoedited

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

76
Zzhu_zong·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

94
Bbob_chenOP·yesterday

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

10
Kkite·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

155
Aalice_dev·2 days agoedited

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

5
Ttang_hao·2 hours ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

57
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

40
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

32
Oops_wang·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

30
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

29
Wwinter·2 days ago

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

417
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

28
Rran_bo·just now

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

27
RraseOP·28 minutes agoedited

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

121
Kkernel_panic·2 hours ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

263
Oops_wang·12 minutes ago

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

516
Hhuang_ke·2 days agoedited

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

219
Lli_mingMod·yesterdayLevel 6

Can you give a minimal reproduction? I ran it locally for ten minutes and could not reproduce on macOS with the latest version.

354
Mmike_xuOP·2 days agoLevel 6

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

1
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

89
Zzhou_yi·5 hours agoedited

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

1
Lli_ming·5 hours agoLevel 6

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

15
Kkite·just now

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

300
Zzhu_zongOP·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

32
Zzhou_yi·2 days ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

115
Mmike_xuMod·5 hours ago

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

40
Rran_boOPMod·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

369
Bbob_chen·2 days agoLevel 6

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

9
Wwinter·2 days agoeditedLevel 6

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

1
Llinlin·2 days ago

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

15
Wwinter·2 days ago

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

70
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

391
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

We have run this in production for two years without hitting it. That said, we never reached this scale, so our experience is not really evidence here.

264
Cchen_dev·28 minutes ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

11
Kkite·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

245
Cchen_dev·2 days ago

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

55
Hhuang_ke·2 days agoLevel 6

One counter-example: below monitoring-pro 7.4 the semantics of that code are different, so do not copy it verbatim. We got burned in staging and rolled back once.

9
Rrase·2 days agoLevel 6

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

2
Oops_wang·12 minutes ago

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

33
Oops_wang·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

419
Ddev_zhou·2 days ago

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

277
WwinterMod·2 days ago

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

186
Sswoole_lee·2 days agoedited

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

25
Rrase·2 days agoedited

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

358
Sslow_query·yesterday

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

23
Oops_wang·2 days ago

Thanks for sharing real numbers — far more useful than the articles that only cover concepts.

9
Mmike_xu·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

6
Ttang_hao·2 days ago

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

3
Sswoole_lee·2 days ago

Worth learning from this debugging approach. We went straight at the logs and took a much longer route.

3
Sslow_query·2 days ago

A question: what changes in a container with a 512Mi memory limit? That is how we run it in production.

3
Wwinter·2 days ago

This matches what we see in production. We only hit it past 3k QPS; the earlier load tests showed nothing — the test traffic was too clean, with no long-tail requests.

3
Wwinter·just now

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

2
Sswoole_lee·yesterday

Has anyone run a controlled experiment? I did, reducing it to a single variable, and the difference was 4% — within noise. So I suspect the main cause is something else.

96
Rran_bo·2 days ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

465
Rran_boOP·just now

I see point 3 differently. The trade-off depends on your read/write ratio: read-heavy with little writing means caching actually widens the inconsistency window.

315
NnikicOPMod·2 days ago

I just read the monitoring-pro source — the author actually explains the reasoning in a comment, roughly "so that it degrades into predictable behaviour in extreme cases".

83
Rrase·2 hours ago

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

54
Nnikic·2 days agoedited

Sharing our numbers, 8 cores 16GB, same scenario:

| Concurrency | P50 | P99 |
|---|---|---|
| 200 | 12ms | 88ms |
| 500 | 31ms | 340ms |

P99 clearly collapses at 500 concurrency, which lines up with your knee point.

15
Cchen_dev·12 minutes ago

Saved. I am reworking this area this week — this saves a lot of wrong turns.

1
Hhuang_ke·2 days ago

There is actually a simpler fix that needs no architecture change: move this check up to the gateway and the problem disappears. The cost is one extra lookup at the gateway.

11
Wwinter·just now

This is not a monitoring-pro problem, it is a usage problem. The docs say this API is not thread-safe and you must lock around it yourself.

1
Zzhu_zong·yesterday

Agreeing with the above. One addition: with this option enabled the GC count in your metrics doubles, so adjust the alert threshold at the same time or it will keep firing.

1

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