Raymond de Jong

One of the most important things when running applications in an environment like Kubernetes is to have good observability and deep insight of their performance. However, for many applications it can be challenging to update existing applications to provide the observability you need.

Cilium leverages eBPF to provide observability data with Prometheus metrics for your applications without having to modify the application itself.

In this session we will demonstrate how Cilium powered with Hubble and the Grafana LGTM (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, Mimir for Metrics) stack is able to show Service to Service communication, monitor Golden Signals, detect transient network layer issues and identifies problematic API request with transparent tracing.

One of the most important things when running applications in an environment like Kubernetes is to have good observability and deep insight of their performance. However, for many applications it can be challenging to update existing applications to provide the observability you need.

Cilium leverages eBPF to provide observability data with Prometheus metrics for your applications without having to modify the application itself.

In this session we will demonstrate how Cilium powered with Hubble and the Grafana LGTM (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, Mimir for Metrics) stack is able to show Service to Service communication, monitor Golden Signals, detect transient network layer issues and identifies problematic API request with transparent tracing.

Using a demo application we will demonstrate performance and metrics for that application and how the metrics change when increasing request volumes. We will show how a new configuration of our application introduces error rates and request duration.

Finally we will demonstrate how tracing headers for the application can be exported with the Hubble HTTP metrics as Exemplars to link metrics to traces in Grafana to monitor each HTTP Request and its duration using Tempo.

The audience will walk away with knowledge how to monitor service-to-service connectivity, collect tracing data and golden metrics using standard Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry with Cilium and eBPF.

Cilium provides an alternative option for the current Service Mesh ecosystem which eliminates service mesh sidecars to improve performance and reduce latency, operational complexity, and resource usage. By the end, the audience will be able to understand and implement a Cilium service mesh that meets their requirements.

Service meshes are becoming the secure, observable networking layer for distributed computing systems like Kubernetes. However, they are also known for their operational complexity and steep learning curve. This talk will help clear up the mess around service mesh.

We will start by introducing what a service mesh is intended to do before diving into hands-on demos using Cilium Service Mesh powered by eBPF. The audience will learn how to monitor service-to-service connectivity, collect tracing data and golden metrics using standard Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry with eBPF.

The talk will close by discussing how eBPF eliminates service mesh sidecars to improve performance and reduce latency, operational complexity, and resource usage. By the end, the audience will be able to understand and implement a service mesh rather than mess.