This talk will be held in English. / Dieser Vortrag wird auf Englisch gehalten.
In recent years, a lot has been promised by eBPF and its capabilities to solve observability issues. For the uninitiated, it almost seems like dark magic, promising to resolve many headaches typically encountered when instrumenting your applications. But, how far can you take auto-instrumentation with eBPF?
This talk explores the capabilities of eBPF instrumentation and looks at what it can (and cannot) solve for engineers. By comparing the leading open-source solutions in the observability space (including Cilium, Beyla and OpenTelemetry), the talk will lay out the basics and details of each solution, the mode of their deployment, the telemetry they produce, and their configurability.
The attendees should have a basic understanding of observability concepts, but they do not need knowledge of eBPF or deeper knowledge of instrumentation types - these will be covered as a part of the talk.
The talk aims to demystify eBPF auto-instrumentation and give the attendees a base understanding of how it works. The attendees will gain helpful insights into what eBPF instrumentation can do, how it compares to more traditional instrumentations, and where it falls short. In the end, the attendees will be able to make an informed decision about which type of instrumentation to go for in different use cases they encounter in their practice.
