BPF Performance Tools (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) - Softcover

Gregg, Brendan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0136554822 ISBN 13: 9780136554820

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional, 2020

Synopsis

BPF Performance Tools provides a practical and comprehensive guide to using eBPF and modern observability tools to gain deep insight into Linux systems and applications. As software environments become increasingly complex, observability has become essential for understanding performance, troubleshooting issues, improving reliability, and strengthening security. This text introduces readers to the concepts, techniques, and tools that enable unprecedented visibility into system behaviour, helping developers, engineers, and administrators identify and solve performance challenges with confidence.

Written by renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg, the text combines foundational knowledge of operating systems, kernel internals, and performance engineering with hands-on exploration of industry-leading BPF technologies. Readers learn how to use eBPF tracing and observability tools to analyse CPUs, memory, storage, file systems, networking, applications, containers, hypervisors, and the Linux kernel. Progressing from fundamental concepts to advanced analysis techniques, the text demonstrates how to generate custom metrics, capture stack traces, build latency histograms, and investigate real-world performance issues across modern computing environments.

Featuring extensive coverage of open-source tools from the Linux Foundation's iovisor project, including bcc and bpftrace, it includes more than 150 ready-to-use tracing tools and examples that can be used immediately or adapted to meet specific requirements. By combining practical examples with powerful diagnostic methodologies, BPF Performance Tools equips readers with the skills needed to improve application performance, enhance system reliability, and gain deeper visibility into virtually every aspect of Linux-based systems.

About this title

About the Author

Brendan Gregg, Netflix senior performance engineer, is a major contributor to BPF (eBPF) who has helped develop and maintain both main BPF front-ends, pioneered BPF’s use for observability, and created dozens of BPF-based performance analysis tools. His books include the best-seller Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud.

From the Back Cover

BPF and related observability tools give software professionals and students alike unprecedented visibility into software, helping them analyze operating system and application performance, troubleshoot code, and strengthen security.  BPF Performance Tools: Linux System and Application Observability is the industry’s most comprehensive guide to using these tools for observability. Brendan Gregg, author of the industry’s definitive guide to system performance, introduces powerful new methods and tools for doing analysis that leads to more robust, reliable, and safer code. 

This authoritative guide:

• Explores a wide spectrum of software and hardware targets
• Thoroughly covers open source BPF tools from the Linux Foundation iovisor project’s bcc and bpftrace repositories
• Summarizes performance engineering and kernel internals you need to understand
• Provides and discusses 150+ bpftrace tools, including 80 written specifically for this book: tools you can run as-is, without programming – or customize and develop further, using diverse interfaces and the bpftrace front-end

Students will learn how to use BPF (eBPF) tracing tools to analyze CPUs, memory, disks, file systems, networking, languages, applications, containers, hypervisors, security, and the Linux kernel. Students will move from basic to advanced tools and techniques, producing new metrics, stack traces, custom latency histograms, and more. It’s like having a superpower: with Gregg’s guidance and tools, students can analyze virtually everything that impacts system performance, so they can improve virtually any Linux operating system or application.

 

• Deeper, more in-depth coverage than any other eBPF resource
• Quickly analyze everything that impacts Linux system performance: ask questions and get fast answers in production environments
• Learn by example, with tools you can use to find performance wins and then customize for even more power
• Covers invaluable, in-demand technology: eBPF was the subject of over two dozen talks at the recent Linux Plumbers developer’s conference
• Downloadable source code includes 80+ new BPF analysis tools created for this book

Use BPF/eBPF tracing and observability tools to improve system performance, reduce costs, resolve software issues, and gain unprecedented visibility into running systems

• Deeper, more in-depth coverage than any other eBPF resource
• Quickly analyze everything that impacts Linux system performance: ask questions and get fast answers in production environments
• Learn by example, with tools you can use to find performance wins and then customize for even more power
• Covers invaluable, in-demand technology: eBPF was the subject of over two dozen talks at the recent Linux Plumbers developer’s conference
• Downloadable source code includes 80+ new BPF analysis tools created for this book

Edition details

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0136554822
• ISBN 13: 9780136554820
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 880