Optimized logging module

Abstract

Techniques are disclosed that allow for retroactively capturing a debug/trace-level log without experiencing the severe performance degradation that obtaining such a log would otherwise entail. Trace-level logging is performed by maintaining a buffer of log messages for application events. The buffer is allocated a memory having very fast write speeds, and writing such messages into the buffer has a negligible performance impact. Many of the messages written into the buffer may not be important or useful at the time they are written. However, when a failure occurs, the messages may be useful for figuring out what when wrong. Responsive to detecting a failure or other anomalous event, the buffer of messages is automatically written to a permanent storage. Although writing to the permanent storage may be slow, the performance degradation is only incurred when a failure occurs.