Re: [clif] about Clif

[Bruno Dillenseger <bruno.dillenseger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ismail.t@xxxxxxxxxxxx a écrit:

> I have just skimmed trough Clif and ResourceProbeImpl.java and think that it's quite cool. I do however have some questions about the implementation like:
> - You retrieve resource usage information from files like /proc/meminfo and /proc/stat, is this the best way (when thinking about the speed/resources used)? How would you do that in a windows system? Is there an Implementation probe for windows? 
> -  You open the files whenever there is a call to UpdateSomethingUsage, is this necessary to open the newly updated file by the system? And by the way does the system update these files each tick 10 ms?  And do you think that your 5 secs default is generally a good time interval? (Would not the injector for example make a significant amount of requests in 5 secs or is it controllable?) 
Hi,

These are good questions that I can't answer right now. The developers 
of this probe system no longer work on CLIF. Thanks for your comments 
anyway.
CLIF is a new project: specification started less than one year ago. If 
most of the original code has been recently reviewed and sometimes 
reengineered, it is not the case as far as the probe sub-system is 
concerned, which should be considered as a draft. We plan actually to 
reengineer this part as a standalone ObjectWeb project, since the scope 
of resource monitoring is much larger than just load testing.
Of course, we would welcome contributors... ;o)

> - Is there a paper that shows how the different modules work together? I think including dependencies to other projects like org.objectweb.fractal.api  and the GUI under org.objectweb.clif.console.gui will make the application hard to read. I spent more then 1 hour and have no clue of how it works together :- ( 
Sorry about that. I've just finished writing a user manual, and I've 
just put it on-line at http://clif.objectweb.org/. Note that there is no 
real need to know about Fractal to use CLIF. It can help when extending 
CLIF (to add support for protocols, or scenarios), but it is not really 
a pre-requisite.

> - I need to set up my application on a cluster and test its performance and 
> monitoring the resources will be a good thing. Is Clif good / stable / easy 
> to do this? (I have max 25 hours to do this). Could you please advice me on 
> other tools to test my application? (Are there any other tools like CLIF?, I 
> have seen jMeter, but don?t think it has a resource monitor/ it only includes 
> the statistics of server response/throughput as seen by end users)
I'm affraid CLIF is not mature enough to help you in quickly setting up 
your test. It would require some extra-developments, and current 
documentation would be unsufficient (I still have to write the 
programmer's guide). Clif's extension process has to be improved. Please 
come back and have a look in october this year, or sooner if you are 
interested in contributing - things are highly open as far as probes are 
concerned.

As a general comment, note that the implementation of such a resource 
monitoring feature is typically OS-dependent. As a result, system 
resource monitoring features are usually provided only for a single OS 
(e.g. Linux xor Windows) and, as a result, your computing environment 
highly determines your testing platform choice. If Linux is OK for you, 
probably you could have a look at the way RUBiS gets such resource 
information using command 'sar' (BTW, this command is provided also in 
Solaris, and probably in most Unix systems).

Hope it helps, and thanks for your interest in Clif.

Regards,
-- Bruno.