Fast thread

In this modern world, thread dumps are still analyzed in a tedious & manual mode i.e., you have to get hold of DevOps team, ask them to send you the thread dumps, then they will mail you the thread dumps, then you will upload the dumps in to a thread dump analysis tool, then you have to apply your intelligence to analyze it. There is no programmatic way to analyze thread dumps in a proactive manner. Thus to eliminate this hassle, fastthread.io is introducing a RESTful API to analyze thread dumps. With one line of CURL command, you can get your thread dumps analyzed instantly.

Here are a few use cases where this API can be extremely useful.

Use case 1: Automatic Root cause Analysis

Most of the DevOps invokes a simple Http ping or APM tools to monitor the applications health. This ping is good to detect whether application is alive or not. APM tools are great at informing that application’s CPU spiked  up by ‘x%’, memory utilization increased by ‘y%’, response time dropped by ‘z’ milliseconds. It won’t inform what caused the CPU to spike up, what caused memory utilization to increase, what caused the response time to degrade. If you can configure Cron job to capture thread dumps/GC logs on a periodic interval and invoke our REST API, we apply our intelligent patterns & machine learning algorithms to instantly identify the root cause of the problem.

Advantage 1: Whenever these sort of production problem happens, because of the heat of the moment, DevOps team recycles the servers with out capturing the thread dumps and GC logs. You need to capture thread dumps and GC logs at the moment when problem is happening, in order to diagnose the problem. In this new strategy you don’t have to worry about it, because your cron job is capturing thread dumps/GC logs on a periodic intervals and invoking the REST API, all your thread dumps/GC Logs are archived in our servers.

Advantage 2: Unlike APM tools which claims to add less than 3% of overhead, where as in reality it adds multiple folds, beauty of this strategy is: It doesn’t add any overhead (or negligible overhead). Because entire analysis of the thread dumps/GCeasy are done on our servers and not on your production servers..

Use case 2: Performance Tests

When you conduct performance tests, you might want to take thread dumps/GC logs on a periodic basis and get it analyzed through the API. In case if thread count goes beyond a threshold or if too many threads are WAITING or if any threads are BLOCKED for a prolonged period or lock isn’t getting released or frequent full GC activities happening or GC pause time exceeds thresholds, it needs to get the visibility right then and there. It should be analyzed before code hits the production. In such circumstance this API will become very handy.

Use case 3: Continuous Integration

As part of continuous integration it’s highly encouraged to execute performance tests. Thread dumps/GC Logs should be captured and it can be analyzed using the API.  If API reports any problems, then build can be failed. In this way, you can catch the performance degradation right during code commit time instead of catching it in performance labs or production.

How to invoke Thread dump analysis API?

Invoking Thread dump analysis API is very extremely simple:

1. Register with us. We will email you the API key. This is a one-time setup process. Note: If you have purchased enterprise version with API, you don’t have to register. API key will be provided to you as part of installation instruction.
2. Post HTTP request to https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOUR_API_KEY}
3. The body of the HTTP request should contain the Thread dump that needs to be analyzed. You can either send 1 thread dump or multiple thread dumps in the same request.
4. HTTP Response will be sent back in JSON format. JSON has several important stats about the Thread dump. Primary element to look in the JSON response is: “problem“. API applies several intelligent thread dump analysis patterns and if it detects any issues, it will reported in this “problem” element.

CURL command

Assuming your Thread dump file is located in “./my-thread-dump.txt,” then CURL command to invoke the API is:

curl -X POST --data-binary @./my-thread-dump.txt https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOUR_API_KEY} --header "Content-Type:text"

It can’t get any more simpler than that? Isn’t it?

Compression

Thread Dump are quite large in size. For fast and efficient processing, we recommend you to compress and send the Thread dump files. When you are compressing the Thread dump, you need to pass ‘Content-Encoding’ element in the HTTP Header element or in the URL parameter.

Say suppose you are compressing Thread dump file in to ‘zip’ format, then you can invoke the API with HTTP header element

curl -X POST --data-binary @./my-thread-dump.zip "https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOU_API_KEY}" --header "Content-Type:text" --header "Content-Encoding:zip"

or you can also invoke the API with ‘Content-Encoding’ element in the URL parameter

curl -X POST --data-binary @./my-thread-dump.zip "https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOUR_API_KEY}&Content-Encoding=zip" --header "Content-Type:text"

We support following compression formats:

zip, gz, xz, z, lzma, deflate, sz, lz4, zstd, bz2, tar

You may use the one of your choice. Whatever compression format you used for compressing the thread dump should be passed in ‘Content-Encoding’ element.

Downloading Thread Dump from remote location

Say suppose, you have stored your thread dump files in a remote location like AWS S3 bucket. In those cases, if you want to analyze your thread dump then you will have to download files to your local machine and then invoke the API with thread dump file. To make it simple and automation easier we have introduced ‘location’ parameter in our API. You can pass http(s) URL location to the ‘location’ parameter and invoke the API. When you do it, API will download file from the remote location, analyze the data and return back the response. For more details refer to this article.

curl -X POST "https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOU_API_KEY}&location={THREAD-DUMP-HTTP-URL}" --header "Content-Type:text"

Other Tools

You can also invoke the API using any web service client tools such as: SOAP UI, Postman Browser Plugin,…..

Fig: POSTing Thread dumps through PostMan plugin

Sample Response

{
  "problem": [
    {
      "level": "SEVERE",
      "description": "8 thread are looping on same lines of code. If threads loop infinitely on the same lines of code, CPU consumption will start to spike up"
    }
  ],
  "threadsRemainingInWaitingState": [
    {
      "method": "java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)",
      "threadCount": 3,
      "threads": "Reference Handler, Dispatcher-Thread-2, Finalizer"
    },
    {
      "method": "sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)",
      "threadCount": 2,
      "threads": "New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Retransformer"
    }
  ],
  "threadDumpReport": [
    {
      "timestamp": "2016-03-03 10:37:28",
      "JVMType": " 64-Bit Server VM (23.7-b01 mixed mode)",
      "threadState": [
        {
          "state": "RUNNABLE",
          "threadCount": 28,
          "threads": "Attach Listener, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-3, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-1, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, Service Thread, C2 CompilerThread1, C2 CompilerThread0, Signal Dispatcher, main, VM Thread, GC task thread#0 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#1 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#2 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#3 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#4 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#5 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#6 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#7 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#8 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#9 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#10 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#11 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#12 (ParallelGC)"
        },
        {
          "state": "WAITING",
          "threadCount": 6,
          "threads": "Dispatcher-Thread-2, New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Retransformer, Finalizer, Reference Handler, VM Periodic Task Thread"
        },
        {
          "state": "TIMED_WAITING",
          "threadCount": 4,
          "threads": "GC Daemon, New Relic Sampler Service, New Relic Deadlock Detector, New Relic Thread Service"
        }
      ],
      "repeatingStackTrace": [
        {
          "stackTrace": "stacktrace",
          "threadCount": 15,
          "threads": "VM Thread, GC task thread#0 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#1 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#2 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#3 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#4 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#5 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#6 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#7 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#8 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#9 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#10 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#11 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#12 (ParallelGC), VM Periodic Task Thread"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.setConnectingFlight(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:380)
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.processTripType0(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:366)
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.processItineraryByTripType(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:254)
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.templateMethod(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:399)
...",
          "threadCount": 8,
          "threads": "InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-3, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-1, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
",
          "threadCount": 5,
          "threads": "Attach Listener, Service Thread, C2 CompilerThread1, C2 CompilerThread0, Signal Dispatcher"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (parking)
at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
- parking to wait for   (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.parkNanos(LockSupport.java:226)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.awaitNanos(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:2082)
...",
          "threadCount": 3,
          "threads": "New Relic Sampler Service, New Relic Deadlock Detector, New Relic Thread Service"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking)
at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
- parking to wait for   (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:186)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.await(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:2043)
...",
          "threadCount": 2,
          "threads": "New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Retransformer"
        },
      ],
      "mostUsedMethod": [
        {
          "method": "com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.setConnectingFlight(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:380)",
          "threadCount": 8,
          "threads": "InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-3, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-1, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9"
        },
        {
          "method": "sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)",
          "threadCount": 5,
          "threads": "New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Sampler Service, New Relic Deadlock Detector, New Relic Thread Service, New Relic Retransformer"
        },
        {
          "method": "java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)",
          "threadCount": 4,
          "threads": "Dispatcher-Thread-2, GC Daemon, Finalizer, Reference Handler"
        },
      ],
            "threadGroup": [
                {
                    "group": "DQBFacade",
                    "threadCount": 100
                },
                {
                    "group": "SectorwiseContractsFacade",
                    "threadCount": 100
                },
                {
                    "group": "SameDayVoidQC",
                    "threadCount": 100
                },
                {
                    "group": "GC task thread",
                    "threadCount": 13
                },
                {
                    "group": "DefaultQuartzScheduler_Worker",
                    "threadCount": 10
                },
            ],
      "gcThreadsCount": 14
    },
    {
      "timestamp": "2016-03-03 10:37:38",
      "JVMType": " 64-Bit Server VM (23.7-b01 mixed mode)",
      "threadState": [
        {
          "state": "RUNNABLE",
          "threadCount": 28,
          "threads": "Attach Listener, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-3, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-1, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, Service Thread, C2 CompilerThread1, C2 CompilerThread0, Signal Dispatcher, main, VM Thread, GC task thread#0 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#1 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#2 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#3 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#4 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#5 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#6 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#7 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#8 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#9 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#10 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#11 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#12 (ParallelGC)"
        },
        {
          "state": "WAITING",
          "threadCount": 6,
          "threads": "Dispatcher-Thread-2, New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Retransformer, Finalizer, Reference Handler, VM Periodic Task Thread"
        },
        {
          "state": "TIMED_WAITING",
          "threadCount": 4,
          "threads": "GC Daemon, New Relic Sampler Service, New Relic Deadlock Detector, New Relic Thread Service"
        }
      ],
      "repeatingStackTrace": [
        {
          "stackTrace": "stacktrace",
          "threadCount": 15,
          "threads": "VM Thread, GC task thread#0 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#1 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#2 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#3 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#4 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#5 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#6 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#7 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#8 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#9 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#10 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#11 (ParallelGC), GC task thread#12 (ParallelGC), VM Periodic Task Thread"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.setConnectingFlight(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:380)
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.processTripType0(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:366)
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.processItineraryByTripType(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:254)
at com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.templateMethod(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:399)
...",
          "threadCount": 8,
          "threads": "InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-3, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-1, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: RUNNABLE
",
          "threadCount": 5,
          "threads": "Attach Listener, Service Thread, C2 CompilerThread1, C2 CompilerThread0, Signal Dispatcher"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: TIMED_WAITING (parking)
at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
- parking to wait for   (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.parkNanos(LockSupport.java:226)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.awaitNanos(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:2082)
...",
          "threadCount": 3,
          "threads": "New Relic Sampler Service, New Relic Deadlock Detector, New Relic Thread Service"
        },
        {
          "stackTrace": "java.lang.Thread.State: WAITING (parking)
at sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)
- parking to wait for   (a java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.LockSupport.park(LockSupport.java:186)
at java.util.concurrent.locks.AbstractQueuedSynchronizer$ConditionObject.await(AbstractQueuedSynchronizer.java:2043)
...",
          "threadCount": 2,
          "threads": "New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Retransformer"
        },
      ],
      "mostUsedMethod": [
        {
          "method": "com.buggycompany.rt.util.ItinerarySegmentProcessor.setConnectingFlight(ItinerarySegmentProcessor.java:380)",
          "threadCount": 8,
          "threads": "InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9, InvoiceGeneratedQC-A99-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-6, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-3, InvoiceGeneratedQC-H87-1, InvoiceGeneratedQC-B85-9"
        },
        {
          "method": "sun.misc.Unsafe.park(Native Method)",
          "threadCount": 5,
          "threads": "New Relic RPM Connection Service, New Relic Sampler Service, New Relic Deadlock Detector, New Relic Thread Service, New Relic Retransformer"
        },
        {
          "method": "java.lang.Object.wait(Native Method)",
          "threadCount": 4,
          "threads": "Dispatcher-Thread-2, GC Daemon, Finalizer, Reference Handler"
        },
      ],
      "gcThreadsCount": 14
    }
  ],
  "responseId": "20161025113858_4"
}

JSON Response Elements

Tagging the report

Suppose you are analyzing thread dumps across hundreds of JVM. You want to tag each report with the hostname, date,… so that it will be handy to know which report belongs to which host. This can be achieved by passing request parameter ‘fileName‘ in the API endpoint i.e. 

https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOUR_API_KEY}&fileName={YOUR_TAG}

Response JSON contains ‘webReport’ element. This element contains an URL. When you paste this URL in the browser, you will see the visual report of the thread dump that was parsed through API. Now on the right top corner of the report in the browser, you will be able to see the tag you had passed in the API.

Say suppose if you pass fileName=Production_Env_Server_1 in the API endpoint, this is how it will show up in the report.

Fig: FastThread report with the tag passed in API

XML Response

By default API response in sent in JSON format. However if you would like to get response in XML format, you can pass ‘accept’ HTTP header element with value ‘xml’

Curl –X POST --data-binary @./my-thread-dump.hprof https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={API_KEY_SENT_IN_EMAIL} –-header "accept:xml"

or you can also invoke the API with ‘accept’ element in the URL parameter

Curl –X POST --data-binary @./my-thread-dump.hprof https://api.fastthread.io/fastthread-api?apiKey={YOUR_API_KEY}&accept=xml

Key elements in API Response

FastThread’s JSON APIs are used for application monitoring, analyzing code quality during CI/CD pipeline and several other purposes. API response contains rich set of information (i.e. lot of elements). In this article, we have highlighted few key elements in the API response. If values of these elements exceed or drops below certain threshold, you might consider raising alerts/warnings or breaking the build.