PerfView Videos on the web (finally)

  • Article

Update: you can also see more complete set of videos here: https://channel9.msdn.com/Series/PerfView-Tutorial

When I first published PerfView back in January, I talked about some tutorial videos that I said I would post.   Well, deciding exactly where to put them required me to stop and think (always dangerous), and then many other priorities (like helping to ship windows 8) diverted my attention and I did not pursue this (I posted some ZIP files, but that is not nearly as convenient).    Well I finally gotten back to this and here the are.    Thanks to the Channel 9 people for hosting these for me.   The next update of PerfView will have links to these web videos wired into the tool so you can find them easily.    Currently there is nothing new that was not in the ZIP files previously posted, but that too is likely to change in the next few weeks. 

So here they are.   Watching them in order is not a bad way to go, but you can also skip around.    As always you can download perfview itself at the PerfView download page.   Finally I find using the Ctrl-Shift-G (go faster) and Ctrl-Shift-N (Normal speed) feature of Windows Media player to be a useful way of cutting the time it takes to watch the videos. 

  • Collecting Data with the PerfView 'Run' Command -(5 min) - Before you can investigate,
    you first have to collect. If your scenario can be run from the command line
    easily, you should use the 'Collect -> Run' command to collect the data. You
    can be finished collecting in less than a minute.
  • A Simple CPU Investigation (16 min) - Typically the first investigation you do
    is to check on CPU usage. This totorial is longer than most, but that is because
    it covers alot of important 'background' information need to be a productive
    investigator. If you watch only one video, this should be it.
  • Symbol Resolution (5 min) - By default Perfview only resolves 'easy' symbols (which
    include many managed methods). If you need symbol (.pdb) files to resolve
    addresses to names you typically need to ask PerfView to do this explicitly.
    This video shows you what the process is where PerfView looks by default, and
    where to start if you have problems getting symbols.
  • Grouping And Folding (13 min) - Something that sets PerfView appart from most other
    profiling tools is its ability to hide a large amount of irrelevant detail while
    also allowing you to have high detail on the parts of the application that
    matter to you.   This magic is done by the grouping and folding features
    (GroupPats and Fold* textboxes).   This video talks demonstrates this power and
    gives you the basics you need in order to use it effectively.  
  • Drilling Into Cost (6 min) - In the first phase of an investigation you use the
    grouping and folding features to reduce the number of nodes you are
    considering.  Your goal is to create nodes that are 'sematically meaninful'
    which account for a substantial part of the cost.  After this grouping is
    complete, you know what to look at, the question is 'How?'.   If you were to
    ungroup, the problem is that are effectively undoing the work you just did.  
    Instead you want pick the samples from JUST ONE ENTRY, and 'Drill into' those. 
    Once these samples are in their own window, you can safely ungroup without
    unrelated calls that you are not interested in skewing the statistics.   This
    view shows you how easy it is to do this.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2012
    Could you post those videos to a online video service? Those offer more convenient viewing. Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    July 17, 2012
    These videos are in fact posted to http://channel9.msdn.com.