Mogul

Performance Engineering · 2018 · 1 min read

Built a system demand analysis tool for visualizing resource utilization patterns across Netflix infrastructure

Overview

System demand analysis tool visualizing data flows and resource dependencies across large-scale distributed systems

Problem

Understanding system demand patterns across hundreds of microservices required aggregating and correlating metrics from multiple sources

Constraints

  • Must handle data from hundreds of services
  • Must show temporal patterns
  • Must identify bottlenecks and resource contention

Approach

Built a tool that aggregates system metrics, correlates demand patterns, and visualizes resource flows across the infrastructure

Key Decisions

Use time-series correlation for bottleneck detection

Reasoning:

Bottlenecks manifest as correlated demand spikes; time-series analysis identifies these patterns automatically

Tech Stack

  • Java
  • Python
  • Elasticsearch
  • D3.js

Result & Impact

Enabled capacity planning and identification of resource contention across services

Learnings

  • System demand visualization reveals hidden dependencies
  • Time-series correlation is effective for bottleneck detection

Features

Mogul provides:

  • System demand heatmaps
  • Resource flow visualization
  • Dependency mapping
  • Bottleneck identification
  • Capacity planning insights