Techniques are described for identifying a root cause of a pattern of performance data in a system including a plurality of services. Embodiments provide dependency information for each of the plurality of services, where at least one of the plurality of services is dependent upon a first one of the plurality of services. Each of the plurality of services is monitored to collect performance data for the respective service. Embodiments further analyze the performance data to identify a cluster of services that each follow a pattern of performance data. The first one of the services in the cluster of services is determined to be a root cause of the pattern of performance data, based on the determined dependency information for each of the plurality of services.