1. A system for providing virtual machine diagnostic information, comprising: a computing or virtual execution environment which includes one or more computers having one or more microprocessor, and a virtual machine, for use in executing one or more software applications; and a flight recorder engine provided in the virtual machine that operates with the virtual machine to record recognized events as event data regarding the operation of the virtual machine and the applications executing thereon, wherein, as recognized events are received at the flight recorder engine, initially the flight recorder engine records event data in the virtual machine's thread-local buffers, and then, when a thread-local buffer has been filled, transfers the event data to a global buffer, and provide the event data from the global buffer as a coordinated ordered stream of data, for use in determining or analyzing virtual machine or application problems.