Unveiling OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation - OpenObservability Talks S6E05
OpenObservability Talks
Intro
Dotan introduces the episode and guest Mario Macías, previewing eBPF, OBI, and the donation of Bela to OpenTelemetry.
eBPF holds the potential for true automatic instrumentation for observability. OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation (OBI) is a new addition to the OpenTelemetry project, which brings the promise of a multi-language, multi-protocol auto-instrumentation, thanks to a code donation by Grafana Labs.
Our guest today is Mario Macías, Principal Software Engineer at Grafana Labs and OpenTelemetry eBFP Instrument maintainer. Macías joins Horovits to share about OBI, its origins, capabilities and how it fits into the broader OpenTelemetry project.
Mario holds a Ph.D. in Computer Architecture and for the last 8 years he's been working in observability at different companies. He also authored books in Spanish language, such as "Programación en Go" or "Introducción a Apache Spark".
You can read the recap post: https://medium.com/p/377cb0432bf1
Show Notes:
00:00 - episode intro
02:11 - guest intro
05:15 - Beyla origins
08:45 - OBI for app monitoring
14:46 - no-code multi-language instrumentation
23:12 - OBI trace support
33:58 - OBI components
43:39 - Beyla project new focus
47:21 - OTel instrumentation SIG
51:34 - collaboration with other OTel components and SIGs
54:59 - OBI roadmap
59:26 - outro
Resources:
- Grafana Beyla donation: https://grafana.com/blog/2025/05/07/opentelemetry-ebpf-instrumentation-beyla-donation/
- eBPF for continuous profiling and the Parca project: https://medium.com/p/8afd5bafd498
- eBPF for tracing and OTel GoLang Auto-instrumentation SIG: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFykWV1mLAI&list=PLd57eY2edRXz4djMETYTm-2p8WGTdoX3D
- eBPF for Kubernetes monitoring and the Pixie project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYDBj5ctKaw&list=PLd57eY2edRXz4djMETYTm-2p8WGTdoX3D&index=52
Dotan Horovits
============
Twitter: @horovits
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/horovits
Mastodon: @horovits@fosstodon
BlueSky: @horovits.bsky.social
Mario Macías
===========
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariomac/
Mastodon: https://masto.es/@macias
Socials:
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/openobservability.bsky.social
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpenObserv
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/openobservability/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@openobservabilitytalks
OpenObservability Talks episodes are released monthly, on the last Thursday of each month and are available for listening on your favorite podcast app and on YouTube.
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