On Correlating Performance Metrics

Performance metrics and their measurements are the basis of identifying and addressing computer performance related issues, from monitoring to capacity planning. IT professionals and performance analysts often face the questions of what metrics to look at, whether those metrics are related, and how to group them in meaningful way for further analysis, e.g., workload characterization. In this paper we present a number of techniques for correlating performance metrics, which could be sampled at different rates, at different lengths and overlapping intervals, and with different response times to a common system event. We also discuss how to assess the reliability of the correlations we compute and how to efficiently find relationships of interest.