Finding the most important information when analyzing Memory Dumps

Help us identify and rank the information required to successfully analyze memory dumps.

We have started developing memory dump analyzers for Visual Studio that help find scenarios like sync-over-async issues; objects stuck in the finalizer queue; and in our latest preview we highlight deadlock scenarios. Our goal is to help our customers find and resolve issues faster! (focusing on the ASP.NET Core platform)

We want your help identifying the most important scenarios to analyze, along with the most important data to highlight.

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* 1. Rank the helpfulness of the following information when analyzing a dump captured to investigate exceptions, crashes or failures.

Show the originating frames for a Stack overflow exception

The dump Exception error codes with common causes (e.g. StackOverFlow, Heap corruption, etc.)

Identify the line of code that caused the exception/crash

List of all exceptions ordered by the originating Thread Id

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* 2. Rank how helpful the following information might when analyzing a dump captured to investigate a high CPU issue.

A garbage collection is currently occurring

Thread contention on Dictionary or other container objects

Find threads performing Regex searches

Identify threads performing large graphics/matrix operations

A list of threads ranked by the highest CPU time

Identify threads with busy loop performance

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* 3. Rank the helpfulness of the following information when analyzing a dump captured to investigate a High Memory issue.

Identify pinned objects causing fragmentation

Calculate memory fragmentation

List of objects from Large Object Heap

Find list of duplicated strings

Generation views 0/1/2

List of Timers

Find large Http Cache objects

A list of the largest roots by inclusive size

Identify objects suspected of causing leaks

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* 4. Rank the helpfulness of the following information when validating the general value of a dump.

System Uptime

Process Uptime

Top 5 threads by CPU time

Modules compiled in Debug Mode

% of threads blocked (waiting in System.Threading.Monitor.Wait)

ADO.NET Connection report (connection type, connection count, etc.)

Overall server CPU usage

Overall server Memory usage

Server Name where the dump

App Pool ID

Number of processors

Identify if this is a dedicated (Azure) instance

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* 5. Please list any additional information (or analyzers) you think would be important for memory dump inspection.

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* 6. If you would be interested in hearing from our engineering team or taking part in future research please leave your email address below.

Email Address

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