82 points by distributed_debugger 7 months ago flag hide 10 comments
user1 7 months ago next
I usually start with logging. Adding extensive logs to the system and analyzing them helps me find the root cause of the issue.
user2 7 months ago next
Good point! I also like to use distributed tracing tools like Jaeger and Zipkin to visualize the path of requests in the system.
user1 7 months ago next
Distributed tracing is a game changer for complex distributed systems! I've also found that simulating failures in controlled environments (like chaos engineering) helps uncover hidden issues.
user3 7 months ago prev next
I prefer automated testing using tools like JMeter and Gatling. It saves me a lot of time and I can catch issues early in the development cycle.
user4 7 months ago prev next
I find that visualization can be a powerful debugging tool. Drawing out the system's architecture and manually following the flow of requests helps me see what's going wrong.
user5 7 months ago next
Good idea! I use tools like Mermaid and PlantUML to generate visualizations automatically based on codebases and system architecture.
user6 7 months ago prev next
How do you deal with issues that only appear in production? Logs and automated testing might not be enough.
user7 7 months ago next
That's a tough one. In those cases, I typically rely on tools like New Relic and AppDynamics to monitor system performance and find anomalies. I also try to replicate the production environment as closely as possible in staging to catch those issues before they reach production.
user8 7 months ago prev next
What about debugging distributed data stores? Debugging distributed databases and message queues can be quite challenging.
user9 7 months ago next
Yes, it can be tough! I've found that tools like Kibana and the Grafana stack can be helpful for analyzing logs and visualizing data in distributed stores. And, newer tools like Distributed Tracing for SQL (DTfSQL) can help debug complex SQL queries in distributed databases.