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https://github.com/grafana/beyla

eBPF-based autoinstrumentation of web applications and network metrics
https://github.com/grafana/beyla

ebpf metrics-gathering observability traces

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eBPF-based autoinstrumentation of web applications and network metrics

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Grafana Beyla logo



# Grafana Beyla



Open source zero-code automatic instrumentation with eBPF and OpenTelemetry.



[![Build Status](https://drone.grafana.net/api/badges/grafana/beyla/status.svg?ref=refs/heads/main)](https://drone.grafana.net/grafana/beyla)



## Introduction



Beyla is a vendor agnostic, eBPF-based, OpenTelemetry/Prometheus application auto-instrumentation tool, which lets you easily get started with Application Observability. 

eBPF is used to automatically inspect application executables and the OS networking layer, allowing us to capture essential application observability events

for HTTP/S and gRPC services. From these captured eBPF events, we produce OpenTelemetry web transaction trace spans and Rate-Errors-Duration (RED) metrics. 

As with most eBPF tools, all data capture and instrumentation occurs without any modifications to your application code or configuration.



## Community



To engage with the Beyla community and to chat with us on our community Slack channel, 

please invite yourself to the Grafana Slack, visit https://slack.grafana.com/ and join the #beyla channel.



We also run a monthly Beyla community call, on the second Wednesday of the month at **4pm UTC**. You can

find all of the details about our community call on the [Grafana Community Calendar](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/embed?src=grafana.com_n57lluqpn4h4edroeje6199o00@group.calendar.google.com).



## Getting Started



To try out Beyla, you need to run a network service for Beyla to instrument.

Beyla supports a wide range of programming languages (Go, Java, .NET, NodeJS, Python, Ruby, Rust, etc.),

so if you already have an example service you can use it.

If you don't have an example, you can download and run `example-http-service.go` from the `examples/` directory:



```

curl -OL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grafana/beyla/main/examples/example-http-service/example-http-service.go

go run ./example-http-service.go

```



Next, generate some traffic. The following command will trigger a GET request to http://localhost:8080 every two seconds.



```

watch curl -s http://localhost:8080

```



Now that we have an example running, we are ready to download and run Beyla.



First, download and unpack the latest release from the [GitHub releases page](https://github.com/grafana/beyla/releases).

The release should contain the `./beyla` executable.



Beyla supports multiple ways to find the service to be instrumented (by network port, executable name, process ID),

and multiple exposition formats (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry metrics, Distributed Traces for Go, Single Span traces for 

other languages).



For getting started, we'll tell Beyla to instrument the service running on port 8080 (our example service) and expose metrics in Prometheus format on port 9400.



```

export BEYLA_PROMETHEUS_PORT=9400

export BEYLA_OPEN_PORT=8080

sudo -E ./beyla

```



Now, you should see metrics on [http://localhost:9400/metrics](http://localhost:9400/metrics).



See [Documentation](https://grafana.com/docs/beyla/) and the [tutorials](https://grafana.com/docs/beyla/latest/tutorial/) for more info.



## Requirements



- Linux with Kernel 5.8 or higher with [BTF](https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/bpf/btf.html)

  enabled, or Linux distributions running RedHat Enterprise Linux 4.18 kernels build 348 and above as they have the required kernel backports. These include CentOS, AlmaLinux, and Oracle Linux. BTF became enabled by default on most Linux distributions with kernel 5.14 or higher.

  You can check if your kernel has BTF enabled by verifying if `/sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux` exists on your system.

  If you need to recompile your kernel to enable BTF, the configuration option `CONFIG_DEBUG_INFO_BTF=y` must be

  set.

- eBPF enabled on the host.

- For instrumenting Go programs, they must have been compiled with at least Go 1.17. We currently

  support Go applications built with a major **Go version no earlier than 3 versions** behind the current

  stable major release.

- Some level of elevated permissions to execute the instrumenter:

    - On host systems, running Beyla requires `sudo`.

    - For Kubernetes we have detailed configuration example on how to run with minimum

      required capabilities in the [examples/k8s/unprivileged.yaml](./examples/k8s/unprivileged.yaml) file.

    - For docker compose, you need to setup Beyla as `privileged` container or grand the `SYS_ADMIN` capability.



| Available Instrumentations                    | Supported  |

|-----------------------------------------------|------------|

| HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2                              | ✅         |

| gRPC                                          | ✅         |

| SQL                                           | ✅         |

| Redis                                         | ✅         |

| Kafka                                         | ✅         |



The Go instrumentation is limited to certain specific libraries.



| Available Go Instrumentations                       | Supported  |

|-----------------------------------------------------|------------|

| Standard Go `net/http`                              | ✅         |

| [Gorilla Mux](https://github.com/gorilla/mux)       | ✅         |

| [Gin](https://gin-gonic.com/)                       | ✅         |

| [gRPC-Go](https://github.com/grpc/grpc-go)          | ✅         |

| [Go x/net/http2](https://golang.org/x/net/http2)    | ✅         |

| [Go-Redis v9](github.com/redis/go-redis)            | ✅         |

| [Sarama Kafka](github.com/IBM/sarama)               | ✅         |

| [kafka-Go](https://github.com/segmentio/kafka-go)   | ✅         |



HTTPS instrumentation is limited to Go programs and libraries/languages using libssl3.



## Kubernetes



You can just trigger the Kubernetes descriptors in the `deployments/` folder.



1. Provide your Grafana credentials. Use the following [K8s Secret template](deployments/01-grafana-credentials.template.yml)

   to introduce the endpoints, usernames and API keys for Mimir and Tempo:

   ```

   $ cp deployments/01-grafana-credentials.template.yml 01-grafana-credentials.yml

   $ # EDIT the fields

   $ vim 01-grafana-credentials.yml

   $ kubectl apply -f 01-grafana-credentials.yml 

   ```

2. Deploy the Grafana Agent:

   ```

   kubectl apply -f deployments/02-grafana-agent.yml

   ```



3. Deploy a demo app with the auto-instrumenter as a sidecar. You can use the blog example in the

   [deployments/03-instrumented-app.yml](./deployments/03-instrumented-app.yml) file.

   

   ```

   $ kubectl apply -f ./deployments/03-instrumented-app.yml

   $ kubectl port-forward service/goblog 8443:8443

   ```



You should be able to query traces and metrics in your Grafana board.



## Development recipes



### How to regenerate the eBPF Kernel binaries



The eBPF program is embedded into the `pkg/internal/ebpf/bpf_*` generated files.

This step is generally not needed unless you change the C code in the `bpf` folder.



If you have Docker installed, you just need to run:



```

make docker-generate

```



If you can't install docker, you should locally install the following required packages:



```

dnf install -y kernel-devel make llvm clang glibc-devel.i686

make generate

```



Tested in Fedora 35, 38 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.



## Building Beyla from scratch



### Development environment requirements



- go 1.23

- llvm >= 18

- clang >= 18

- clang-tidy >= 18

- clang-format >= 18

-  git-lfs

- GNU make



> [!IMPORTANT]

>  You need to run `git lfs install` _once_ after installing the _git-lfs_ package to deploy its global configuration



#### Common `Makefile` targets



Beyla's `Makefile` provides several specific-purpose build targets. The most common ones are:

- `prereqs` - install the build pre-requisites

- `generate` - regenerates the eBPF binaries

- `compile` - compiles the `beyla` binary (but does not automatically regenerates the eBPF binaries)

- `dev` - equivalent to `make prereqs && make generate && make compile`

- `test` - runs unit tests

- `integration-tests` - runs integration tests - may require `sudo`



####  Quickstart: cloning the repository and building Beyla



```

$ git clone https://github.com/grafana/beyla.git

$ cd beyla/

$ make dev

```



As described in the previous section, `make dev` takes care of setting up the build pre-requisites, including deploying a `clang-format` pre-commit hook.



After a successful compilation, binaries can be found in the `bin/` subdirectory.



#### Formatting and linting code



Beyla uses linters to enforce our coding style and best practices:

- `golangci-lint` for Go code

- `clang-format` for formatting C code

- `clang-tidy` for static analysis of the C code



All of them are enforced on pull requests as part of the Beyla github workflows. Additionally, you can invoke the linters manually:



- `make lint` invokes `golangci-lint` on the Go code

- `make clang-tidy` invokes `clang-tidy` on the C/eBPF code



`clang-format` is invoked automatically as a `pre-commit` git hook, so there is no explicit `Makefile` target for it.



#### Running VM tests



In addition to the `test` and `integration-test` `Makefile` targets, Beyla also runs select tests on QEMU virtual machines in order to be able to test different kernel versions. These tests are also part of our GitHub workflow, but it is also possible to run them manually using the following command:



```

$ sudo make -C test/vm KERNEL_VER=...

```



where `KERNEL_VER` is one of the supported kernel versions located in `test/vm/kernels`. For example, to run tests against kernel version 5.15.152, simply do:



```

$ sudo make -C test/vm KERNEL_VER=5.15.152

```



## Credits



Part of the code is taken from: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-go-instrumentation