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The full-link monitoring mode in performance testing refers to the implementation of comprehensive monitoring measures while stress-testing the entire application stack based on simulating actual user usage scenarios to ensure high availability, stability, and scalability of the system.

At present, the Internet is popular for microservices, the traditional business link is split into multiple subsystems to complete, due to the service collapse subsystem, we need the collapse subsystem to perform performance analysis during performance diagnosis analysis, we need to know the time consumption of the business in each system.

During operation and maintenance monitoring, it is also necessary to know the load status of the system to facilitate targeted expansion of the system.

These monitoring measures are designed to capture system behavior under different load conditions, helping development and operations teams identify and resolve issues in a timely manner.

What are the modes of full-link monitoring for performance testing?

1. Call Chain Trace

Call chain tracing is one of the core concepts of full-link monitoring, which records all intermediate calls from the request source (such as front-end pages or mobile terminals) to the end-end underlying services (e.g., databases, caches, etc.). In this way, you can visualize the service nodes through which each request passes and the interactions between nodes. This helps identify performance bottlenecks and service dependencies and quickly locates the root cause of the problem.

2. Distributed tracing and log aggregation

For complex distributed systems, a single request can span multiple microservices or different infrastructure components. Therefore, it becomes particularly important to employ distributed tracing tools (such as SkyWalking, Jaeger, Zipkin, etc.) to track the path of requests across services. In addition, log information for each service needs to be collected and centrally managed for easy analysis and troubleshooting. This approach not only reduces the impact on business logic but also ensures the consistency and integrity of monitoring data.

3. Real-time performance index collection

To provide accurate and timely feedback, a full-link monitoring system needs to be able to collect key performance indicators (KPIs) in real time, such as response time, throughput, number of concurrent users, error rate, etc. At the same time, it should also have good flexibility to allow business parties to adjust monitoring strategies according to their own needs, including choosing the scope of data to be collected and its granularity. Typically, this type of monitoring is combined with an open-source monitoring solution like Prometheus to enable efficient time series data analysis.

4. Resource utilization monitoring

In addition to focusing on application-level performance, full-link monitoring should also include monitoring the status of underlying hardware resources (CPU, memory, disk I/O, network bandwidth, etc.) and cloud service instances (ECS, RDS, etc.). Continuous observation of these resource utilizations can help us understand whether the current environment meets the expected load requirements and inform future capacity planning.

5. Automated testing and rollback mechanisms

When performing large-scale, full-link stress tests must be supported by a well-established automated test process to ensure that the system remains up and running even under extreme conditions. This means not only testing normal business processes but also verifying the effectiveness of various exception handling mechanisms such as current limiting, circuit breakers, de-escalation, etc. In addition, if a problem is discovered, the corresponding emergency plan should be activated immediately, such as automatically triggering a rollback operation to restore service.

6. Quality of user experience (QoE) assessment

The end-user experience often determines the success or failure of an Internet product, so full-link monitoring should not only be limited to technical parameter measurement, but should pay more attention to the quality of actual user experience. Performance data (loading speed, interaction latency, etc.) on the client side can be obtained through the burial technology and combined with server-side data to form a complete view of the user journey, thereby optimizing the overall quality of service.

Full-link monitoring is not only a simple technical means, but also a comprehensive engineering practice process. It requires us to consider how to effectively integrate various monitoring tools and technology solutions from the beginning of the design, and build a monitoring system that does not affect the existing business and can provide deep insights. With the development of emerging technologies such as cloud computing and containerization, full-link monitoring will continue to evolve in the future, becoming smarter, more agile, and easier to maintain.

Microservices are popular, system call relationships are complex, and full-link monitoring is urgently needed during performance testing. Users can use Skywalking, a full-link monitoring tool, to simplify business performance analysis.

Performance analysis requires a wide and deep knowledge system, which sometimes requires teamwork and higher work efficiency, especially in ecosystems with high system complexity (many subsystems, forming an ecological chain together) Performance test engineers may not be proficient in one aspect of knowledge, but they must understand, just as we need to understand which performance indicators need to be monitored.