September 2017 Summaries

Sysdig Inspect is an advanced tool designed for analyzing sysdig capture files, offering a user-friendly interface for Mac and Linux users to facilitate container troubleshooting and security investigations. Building on Sysdig's ability to capture detailed system, application, and container data, Sysdig Inspect provides an intuitive overview through organized tiles that display relevant metrics and trends at sub-second granularity, enabling users to correlate metrics, identify hotspots, and drill down into data for detailed analysis. The tool records every byte of data interactions and allows users to switch into sysdig mode to examine system calls, making it valuable for diagnosing network issues or investigating security incidents. The design of Sysdig Inspect prioritizes ease of use, effectiveness, and user satisfaction, aiming to streamline monitoring, troubleshooting, and forensic processes in container environments. Users are encouraged to experiment with Sysdig Inspect through available capture files and to join the Sysdig community for further engagement and feedback.

Convincing management to transition to container-based infrastructure can be challenging, particularly when an organization's existing systems are functioning adequately. While testing and trial projects can address data-driven concerns about containers, the more difficult task is persuading management of the strategic necessity of adopting this platform shift. Instead of directly confronting this challenge, the article suggests leveraging testimonials from peers in other organizations who have successfully implemented containers and microservices. This peer-to-peer communication can be more effective in illustrating both the advantages and challenges of the transition. A video created by CIO journalist Mark Chillingworth, featuring insights from other CIOs on the benefits of containers, is recommended as a tool to help facilitate this conversation by providing high-level insights into their application in large digital transformation projects.

Sysdig's blog post discusses the integration of IBM Bluemix's container service with Sysdig's monitoring tools to enhance container visibility and management. The author highlights Bluemix's stable Kubernetes-backed environment and Sysdig's ContainerVision technology, which provides full visibility into container activities without needing to alter application code. This combination is portrayed as ideal for DevOps, offering a streamlined three-step process to deploy and monitor containers effectively. Sysdig's approach, which uses a per-host agent model, promises reduced resource consumption and comprehensive monitoring, demonstrating its capability to provide out-of-the-box insights into CPU, memory, network usage, and application metrics. The blog emphasizes the power and simplicity of containers, their dynamic nature, and the need for robust monitoring, which Sysdig addresses through its integration with Bluemix, thereby enhancing developers' ability to manage and scale applications efficiently.

The blog post narrates a troubleshooting story about a Docker container experiencing Out of Memory (OOM) errors, which was investigated by a Sysdig customer engineer. The issue involved a major hosting provider's LAMP stack, where a MySQL container was frequently killed by the kernel due to OOM events. Initial suspicions pointed to Sysdig's agent as the cause, but further investigation using Sysdig Monitor and Sysdig open-source tools revealed that the PHP-FPM container was leaking memory. By analyzing system calls and memory allocation patterns with tools like gdb, the engineer traced the problem to the ionCube PHP extension. Disabling this extension resolved the memory leak, underscoring the importance of using appropriate tools for container management and resource allocation to prevent such issues from affecting other containers. The post highlights the necessity of tools like Sysdig for gaining visibility and understanding container behaviors, as well as the value of setting resource limits to manage container resource usage effectively.