Summary Bullets:

• Developer buzz around enhanced OSS technology will heavily impact observability solutions.

• eBPF’s kernel-level OS access ensures deeper visibility into system events and processes.

Little-known open-source software eBPF improves on observability’s modern monitoring techniques through deep visibility into systems, detection of problematic issues, reduction of downtime, and a boost in performance and security of applications.

Decades-old and updated just 10 years ago, Berkely Packet Filter (BPF), the core technology, helps to address cloud native context higher up the stack. It is only recently that it is finding adoption beyond networking and into security and observability use cases.

During KubeCon in late 2023, eBPF (e for extended) received startling buzz and interest among developers and IT ops professionals. The technology significantly simplifies infrastructure engineering requirements and reduces resource usage within Kubernetes environments while providing deeper insight into app performance across distributed systems and cloud environments. Then Cisco put eBPF further on the map by announcing plans to acquire Isovalent, a network software provider whose technology is based on eBPF.

The acquisition is a good move by Cisco. Since the shift to new application architectures – e.g., microservices, Kubernetes containers, and cloud-native models in recent years – ops teams have struggled to merge this app modernization movement with traditional infrastructure – e.g., networking and security. Current monitoring methods are only achieved through cumbersome coding integrated within applications or cloud workloads, which can heavily impact system performance. Enterprises are seeking effective and lightweight methods of extracting observability data on applications.

For this reason, GlobalData predicts that eBPF will revolutionize observability solutions in 2024 for its ease in improving observability, security, and performance optimization throughout the application lifecycle.

DevOps team members will be able to access critical infrastructure features easily, namely operating system kernel-level access for much deeper visibility into system events and processes. The technology supports the creation of customizable observability solutions, to achieve more focused insight into specific systems, resource usage, and data management/analysis. This is conducted in such a way so as to avoid performance interruption. eBPF events are only triggered at the behest of the customized observability solution based on specified events, capturing only relevant data points.

For more GlobalData prediction on observability trends, please see Observability: 2024 Predictions.