Exposing the Revolution: GRPC Observability with eBPF on K8s
summary
Shows an eBPF-based method that extracts gRPC payloads, headers and stream IDs by attaching five u‑probes into the grpcc library (python/C++/C#/PHP) to recover compressed header names that never hit the kernel. Demonstrates zero code changes to apps, a live demo that reconstructs requests and stream close events, and integration into the Pixie CNCF project supporting grpcc and grpc‑go. Covers obstacles: inlined functions, builds without symbols, and the practical fix of hashing many library versions and locating probes by unique strings.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (7)
- 0:00The vision for observability
- 2:11Challenges with gRPC
- 6:10Kernel vs. user probes
- 10:05The role of USDT
- 12:28Implementation via hacking
- 18:15Demonstration and results
- 20:08Future and maintenance
related talks
10mLightning Talk: What Can eBPF Actually do for Modern-day Observability?
27mLow-Overhead Tracing Using eBPF for Observability into Kubernetes Apps and Services
54mTracing Go Programs with eBPF!
37meBPF: Revolutionizing Observability and Telemetry for Modern Applications
31meBPF for Observability: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
23mAn Intro to eBPF with Go : The Foundation of Modern Kubernetes Networking
35mAn Introduction to eBPF - Superpowers for Networking, Observability & Security
31mZero instrumentation observability with eBPF