Over the recent decade, cloud computing and cloud-native platforms emerged and promised lower costs, less effort, and more flexibility. Unfortunately, in practice, it is not so easy. Knowledge short gaps, pitfalls, the complexity of using cloud APIs, and misunderstanding of services and systems cause companies to lose millions of dollars every year. On top of that, the big data world demands more and more software and computing power every day. Fortunately, there is a method to that madness! No matter if you build your own software, or use open-source or paid systems, there are many efficiency gains that will save tons of money. Sometimes it’s a code optimization, sometimes algorithm adjustment, sometimes system-level operation! In this talk Bartek, an open-source maintainer of observability projects like Prometheus and Thanos, author of the “Efficient Go” book and the CNCF TAG Observability Tech Lead, will explain how to notice and uncover efficiency problems effectively thanks to the power of modern cloud-native observability and tooling. The audience will learn pragmatic practices they can do to ensure effective and sustainable optimizations and how to avoid regressions in the future. All to increase the business operational margin and enable more opportunities with more efficient software and systems.

1. Brought to you by
Clouds are Not Free:
Guide to Observability-Driven
Efficiency Optimizations
Bartłomiej Płotka
Principal Software Engineer at RedHat

2. @bwplotka
Welcome to
Oyster Talk!
Inspiration: Leon Adato’s talk, Oyster Info

3. @bwplotka
Bartłomiej (Bartek) Płotka
Principal Software Engineer @ Red Hat
■ Open Source, Go, Distributed Systems, Observability
● Thanos co-author, maintainer of Prometheus
● …and ~20 more projects
■ Mentor in the CNCF Mentoring Initiatives (~19 times)
■ CNCF Ambassador and TAG Observability Tech Lead

4. @bwplotka
Bartłomiej (Bartek) Płotka
Principal Software Engineer @ Red Hat
■ Open Source, Go, Distributed Systems, Observability
● Thanos co-author, maintainer of Prometheus
● …and ~20 more projects
■ Mentor in the CNCF Mentoring Initiatives (~19 times)
■ CNCF Ambassador and TAG Observability Tech Lead
https://bwplotka.dev/book

5. @bwplotka
Story From Thanos Project

6. @bwplotka
Story From Thanos Project

7. @bwplotka
Ups!

8. @bwplotka
Ups!

9. @bwplotka
Solutions?
Let’s “tune” configuration!

10. @bwplotka
Solutions?
Vertical Scale Up

11. @bwplotka
Solutions?
Horizontal Scale Out!

12. @bwplotka
Solutions?
Let’s install different OSS system…

13. @bwplotka
What helped?
Optimizing on Algorithm and Code Level!

14. @bwplotka
Software Efficiency Enables Things!
…yet we don’t focus on it with the right mindset!

15. @bwplotka
When we Don’t Optimize our Software…

16. @bwplotka
Optimization Design Levels

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Optimization Levels
System
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compilation
Operating System
Hardware

18. @bwplotka
Optimization Levels: System
System
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compilation
Operating System
Hardware
Let’s “tune” configuration
Horizontal scale out
Pay for the cloud vendor
Let’s install different OSS system

19. @bwplotka
Optimization Levels: System
System
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compilation
Operating System
Hardware
Let’s “tune” configuration
Horizontal scale out
Pay for the cloud vendor
Let’s install different OSS system
Let’s REWRITE in
RUST or Carbon!

20. @bwplotka
Optimization Levels: Algorithm & Code
System
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compilation
Operating System
Hardware
O(n^2) => O(n)
28 + 99 * N ns
=> 4.5 *N ns

21. @bwplotka
Optimization Levels: OS & Hardware
System
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compilation
Operating System
Hardware
Page size increase!
Switch to SSD, faster CPU, more RAM, cloud infra…

22. @bwplotka
“Close Box” Thinking (prev. black box)
System
???
??? ???
Operating System
Hardware
Close Box

23. @bwplotka
“My Baby” Thinking
System
???
??? ???
Operating System
Hardware
Close Box My Baby Code
???
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compiler
???
???

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Enable “Open Box” Thinking
System
???
??? ???
Operating System
Hardware
Close Box My Baby Code
???
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compiler
???
???
System
Algorithm & Data Structures
Implementation Compiler
Operating System
Hardware
Balance!

25. @bwplotka
Effective Optimization Flow
TFBO
For All Levels!

26. @bwplotka
TFBO: Test Fix Benchmark Optimize
(benchmark driven optimizations)
TDD wrapped with BDO
(test driven development)

27. @bwplotka
TFBO: Test Fix Benchmark Optimize
TDD wrapped with BDO

28. @bwplotka
Set Clear Goals
RAER

29. @bwplotka
No Efficiency Requirements
“Not sure if that’s fast enough… YOLO” 🙈

30. @bwplotka
Not Clear Efficiency Requirements
“Program should be fast and use reasonable amount of memory” 🤔

31. @bwplotka
RAER: Resource Aware Efficiency Requirements
API should have:
Runtime Complexity: ~34.4 * N^2 nanoseconds
Space (RAM) Complexity: ~2.3 * N bytes

32. @bwplotka
Observability is the Key

33. @bwplotka
Observability Tools
Metrics (go test, Prometheus, Thanos)
Logging (e.g. Loki, OpenSearch)
Tracing (e.g. Tempo, Jaeger)
Profiling (e.g. pprof, Parca)

34. @bwplotka
Lessons
■ Optimizing Software Efficiency might be easier than you think! [if done right]
● Utilize all Optimization Levels
● Set Clear Goals e.g. RAER
● Follow Pragmatic TFBO Flow
● Invest in Observability

35. Brought to you by
Bartłomiej Płotka
Thank You!
Ask questions, share feedback and reach me
through links at https://bwplotka.dev/
Follow me on Twitter for latest on book,
efficiency, observability and Go!
https://twitter.com/bwplotka
Book pre-orders at https://bwplotka.dev/book