# Lightweight Debugging with Performance Analyzer and PerfTop in Open Distro for Elasticsearch | Open Distro
**URL:** https://forum.opensearch.org/t/lightweight-debugging-with-performance-analyzer-and-perftop-in-open-distro-for-elasticsearch-open-distro/1662
**Category:** General Feedback
**Created:** [October 6, 2019, 4:06pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/lightweight-debugging-with-performance-analyzer-and-perftop-in-open-distro-for-elasticsearch-open-distro/1662 "2019-10-06T16:06:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@stevliu](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/stevliu)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2019, 4:06pm UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/lightweight-debugging-with-performance-analyzer-and-perftop-in-open-distro-for-elasticsearch-open-distro/1662/1 "2019-10-06T16:06:31Z")
When you want to monitor your Elasticsearch cluster or debug an issue, you have a number of choices. You can use the various \_cat and stats APIs to pull information out of the cluster. You can monitor and profile the JVM itself. These options can be cumbersome, and they lack visual displays. While you could push \_cat and stats data back into Elasticsearch and visualize with Kibana, sometimes you want a more lightweight method. [Open Distro for Elasticsearch](https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/) ships with two components that combine to give you the lightweight tool you need to quickly retrieve and display core metrics. [Performance Analyzer](https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/performance-analyzer) is an agent and REST API that allows you to query numerous performance metrics for your cluster, including aggregations of those metrics, independent of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Performance Analyzer runs on and collects metrics from the same nodes that you use to run Elasticsearch. [PerfTop](https://github.com/opendistro-for-elasticsearch/perftop) is a lightweight, command-line tool patterned after Linux’s _top_ command. You use simple JSON to define dashboards; PerfTop displays these dashboards in your favorite terminal application.
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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at [https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/blog/open%20distro%20for%20elasticsearch%20updates/2019/04/Lightweight-Debugging-with-Performance-Analyzer-and-PerfTop-in-Open-Distro-for-Elasticsearch/](https://opendistro.github.io/for-elasticsearch/blog/open%20distro%20for%20elasticsearch%20updates/2019/04/Lightweight-Debugging-with-Performance-Analyzer-and-PerfTop-in-Open-Distro-for-Elasticsearch/)
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### Author:  [@kris](https://forum.opensearch.org/u/kris)
#### Post date: [February 7, 2023, 1:10am UTC](https://forum.opensearch.org/t/lightweight-debugging-with-performance-analyzer-and-perftop-in-open-distro-for-elasticsearch-open-distro/1662/2 "2023-02-07T01:10:53Z")