Q&A Answers

[Asheesh Laroia]

I wear these hats:
* System administrator
* Architect
* Application developer

I am familiar with these OSs:
* Solaris (I co-ran an OpenSolaris file server at acm.jhu.edu for a
while, and maintained a Nexenta box there too)
* Linux (I'm a Debian developer and use Ubuntu daily as well)

I have heard about DTrace! I haven't used it because dealing with
OpenSolaris always stuck me as some combination of a nightmare and a
circus. (Honestly, I don't get it -- are we really supposed to run
OpenSolaris on bare metal servers just to get DTrace? Where can I buy
a $20/mo VPS with 512MB of RAM that runs OpenSolaris? If we can't,
then how are we seriously supposed to cost-effectively deploy web
applications to OpenSolaris? If not, then are we supposed to keep
virtual OpenSolaris environments around?)

I use C and Python regularly.

I'd be most interested in "real-world" use of DTrace by people who
aren't primarily Solaris people, or who don't work in primarily
Solaris shops. I'd also be interested to hear if DTrace can work
inside a BrandZ Linux-ish zone, since that way I could have a Debian-
like environment.

I would be interested in hearing about using DTrace to find
performance bottlenecks in web applications.

I realize now this might have come off a bit harsh. Not at all! I'm
actually interested in how people are using DTrace, and I look forward
to the tutorial. (-:

Yours,

-- Asheesh.