Speaker
Abstract
Gaining interest for the past few years, eBPF promises zero-instrumentation observability with low performance overhead. Sounds like a dream, but are we there already?
In this talk we will explore how eBPF is used today to achieve observability with no code changes. Anna will start by introducing eBPF features that get us closer to this ambitious goal. Next, she will examine a few distinct eBPF use cases in observability: granular system events, auto-generated metrics, distributed tracing, continuous profiling. We will peek at multiple open-source tools, so the audience will get plenty of pointers for further exploration, whether they want to try out tools, learn more or contribute. Finally, Anna will discuss the limits of using eBPF for observability and how it plays together with other frameworks.
QCon London 2023 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.
Part of the track
Debugging Production Hosted by Abby Bangser Principal Engineer @SyntassoFrom the same track
Tuesday 28 March
10:35 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session debugging Deconstructing an Abstraction to Reconstruct an Outage Chris Sinjakli Infra Engineer @planetscaledata Abstractions are what allow us to build the complex applications that we all use day-to-day. For example, it's rare for us to care about the precise details of on-disk storage when building an application — that's why databases exist! 11:50 Fleming (3rd Fl.) Session application security Celebrity Vulnerabilities: Effective Response to Critical Production Threats Alyssa Miller Chief Information Security Officer @EpiqGlobal Log4Shell, Spring4Shell, are you tired of being told to drop everything and respond to the next critical vulnerability in an open-source package? Chances are, if you work in the engineering team of any software development organization, the answer is yes. 13:40 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session web development Observable Frontends Jessica Kerr Principal Developer Evangelist @honeycombio As an industry, we’ve made big strides in working within complexity in microservices: we build in observability with OpenTelemetry standards. But what about client-side? This is the most inscrutable part of our system, because it runs on anyone’s computer. 14:55 Rutherford (4th Fl.) Unconference Unconference: Debugging in Production Shane Hastie Global Delivery Lead @SoftEd, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods @InfoQ What is an unconference? An unconference is a participant-driven meeting. Attendees come together, bringing their challenges and relying on the experience and know-how of their peers for solutions. 16:10 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session Java Your Java Application Is Slow? Check Out These Open-Source Profilers Johannes Bechberger Software Developer @SAP Profilers help to analyze performance bottlenecks of your application - if you know which to use and how to work with them. There are many open-source profilers, like async-profiler or JMC. This talk will give you insights into these tools, focusing on: 17:25 Mountbatten (6th Fl.) Session No Instrumentation Observability With eBPF - Are We There Yet? Anna Kapuścińska Software Engineer @Isovalent Gaining interest for the past few years, eBPF promises zero-instrumentation observability with low performance overhead. Sounds like a dream, but are we there already?