Answer by StackOverflow TychoAI Agent • 3 days ago

Throughput in Software System Performance Metrics

In the context of a vendor RFP (Request for Proposal) for software system performance metrics, "throughput" refers to the amount of work your system can handle in a given time period. This is a critical performance metric that potential clients want to understand.

What vendors are typically looking for:

Transaction rate: The number of transactions your system can process per second/minute/hour
Data volume handling: How many megabytes/gigabytes of data your system can process in a time unit
Request handling capacity: Number of API calls, user requests, or operations that can be completed per time unit
Concurrent user support: How system throughput scales with increasing numbers of simultaneous users
Peak load capabilities: Maximum throughput under optimal conditions and how the system behaves at these levels

Vendors typically want to see:

Specific, measurable metrics (e.g., "Processes 1,000 transactions per second")
How throughput varies under different conditions
Any throughput guarantees you can provide
How your system maintains throughput under increasing load

When responding to an RFP, provide concrete throughput numbers backed by testing data rather than vague claims about "high performance" or "fast processing."

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ZenithRover684 • 3 days ago

provide some grafana query expressions that can be used to retrieve this data? prometheus query language etc.

StackOverflow Tycho • 3 days ago

Prometheus/Grafana Queries for Throughput Metrics

Here are some PromQL (Prometheus Query Language) expressions you can use in Grafana to measure the throughput metrics mentioned:

Transaction Rate

sum(rate(application_transactions_total[5m]))

This shows the rate of transactions per second over a 5-minute window.

Data Volume

sum(rate(application_data_processed_bytes_total[5m]))

Measures data throughput in bytes per second.

Request Handling

sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))

For API/HTTP request throughput.

Concurrent Users

sum(application_active_sessions)

For active user sessions.

Peak Load Analysis

max_over_time(sum(rate(application_transactions_total[5m]))[1d])

Shows maximum throughput over the past day.

Response Time Under Load

histogram_quantile(0.95, sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le))

Shows 95th percentile response time, which helps correlate throughput with performance.

Replace the metric names with your actual metric names in your Prometheus setup.

ZenithRover684 • 3 days ago

can this metric qualify to be used as a measure for throughput?

container_network_receive_bytes_total metric
Cloudera Data Services on premises metrics for container_network_receive_bytes_total.

Parent topic: cadvisor deployment
container_network_receive_bytes_total metric
Name
container_network_receive_bytes_total
Description
Cumulative count of bytes received
Type
COUNTER
Labels
container
id
image
interface
name
namespace
pod
Unit
Aggregates
timestamp_ms
Meta
Category: monitoring
Deployment: cadvisor
Additional Notes
null
Version
null

there is an alternate metrics: container_network_transmit_bytes_total and the same pair for packets transmitted and received

StackOverflow Tycho • 3 days ago

Network Metrics as Throughput Measures

Yes, container_network_receive_bytes_total and container_network_transmit_bytes_total are excellent metrics for measuring network throughput in your system.

Since these are COUNTER type metrics (cumulative), you'll need to calculate the rate of change over time to get actual throughput values. For example:

rate(container_network_receive_bytes_total[5m])

This would give you bytes received per second averaged over 5 minutes.

For an RFP response, I recommend:

Convert to more readable units (MB/s or GB/s)
Provide both average and peak throughput values
Include both ingress (receive) and egress (transmit) metrics
Correlate with the packet metrics to show efficiency (bytes/packet ratio)

These network metrics are particularly relevant for distributed systems like Cloudera where network performance is often a critical bottleneck.

What Does "Throughput" Mean in a Vendor RFP for Software System Performance Metrics?

1 Answer