Cloud Profiler enables continuous performance analysis of production applications with minimal overhead. Identify CPU hotspots and memory leaks without slowing down your application.
What is Cloud Profiler?
Cloud Profiler is a statistical profiling tool for production applications on Google Cloud. It continuously collects CPU and memory data with less than 0.5% overhead and visualizes results as flame graphs.
Unlike traditional profilers that only run in development environments, Cloud Profiler was designed for continuous operation in production. This enables analysis of performance problems under real load.
Core Features
- CPU Profiling: Identification of functions with high CPU consumption
- Heap Profiling: Detection of memory leaks and inefficient memory usage
- Flame Graphs: Visual representation of call hierarchy and resource usage
- Time Comparisons: Compare profiles across different time periods
- Filters and Aggregation: Analysis by service, version, or zone
Typical Use Cases
Performance Optimization
Identify the 5% of code that consumes 95% of CPU time. Flame graphs immediately show which functions should be optimized.
Memory Leak Analysis
Heap profiles over time show if and where memory is accumulating. Compare profiles before and after deployments.
Cost Reduction
CPU hotspots mean higher cloud costs. Optimizing the most expensive functions directly reduces the compute bill.
Benefits
- Production-ready: Less than 0.5% overhead allows continuous operation
- No Code Changes: Agent-based instrumentation without source code modification
- Free: Part of the Cloud Operations Suite without additional fees
- Integrated: Native integration with GKE, Cloud Run, Compute Engine, and App Engine
Integration with innFactory
As a Google Cloud Partner, innFactory supports you with Cloud Profiler: setup, profile interpretation, and performance optimization of your applications.
Typical Use Cases
Technical Specifications
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Cloud Profiler?
Cloud Profiler is a continuous profiling tool that analyzes CPU and memory usage of production applications. Unlike traditional profilers, it runs permanently with minimal overhead (under 0.5% CPU) and collects statistical data about application performance.
Which programming languages does Cloud Profiler support?
Cloud Profiler natively supports Go, Java, Node.js, and Python. For other languages, you can implement custom profiling agents or use the REST API.
How does Cloud Profiler differ from Cloud Trace?
Cloud Trace analyzes request latency and shows where time is spent in distributed systems. Cloud Profiler shows which functions consume CPU and memory. Both complement each other for complete performance analysis.
How much does Cloud Profiler cost?
Cloud Profiler is free as part of the Cloud Operations Suite. You only pay for the compute resources your application uses, not for the profiling itself.
Does Cloud Profiler affect application performance?
Overhead is under 0.5% CPU, which is negligible for production environments. Cloud Profiler uses statistical sampling instead of full instrumentation.
