New Relic eBPF Expands Kernel-Level Observability

New Relic originally introduced eAPM to simplify Kubernetes application monitoring with no-code instrumentation. Now New Relic eBPF now extends visibility to monitor applications running on Kubernetes and Hosts to include infrastructure and network behavior—enabling platform engineers, SREs, and DevOps teams to correlate application performance with underlying system and network activity from a single, unified experience.

Evolving beyond Kubernetes to full-stack kernel observability

New Relic eBPF builds on New Relic’s investment in eBPF-based technologies, including contributions to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). While it was initially focused on Kubernetes environments, New Relic eBPF now provides visibility across applications, infrastructure, and network layers.

Recent enhancements, including New Relic eBPF Network Metrics, extend this capability by providing deep, real-time insights into TCP and DNS activity at the kernel level. By attributing network behavior directly to the originating process or workload, teams can quickly identify whether performance issues stem from application logic, infrastructure constraints, or underlying network conditions—without requiring packet capture or manual correlation.

With New Relic eBPF, teams can automatically discover and monitor services, analyze process-level behavior, and identify performance bottlenecks across distributed systems—without code changes or manual instrumentation.

Key benefits of New Relic eBPF include:

• Faster root cause analysis across layers
  Correlate application performance with system-level and network behavior to quickly determine whether issues originate from application logic, infrastructure constraints, or network conditions.
• Zero-instrumentation, low-overhead deployment
  Leverage eBPF to collect telemetry directly from the Linux kernel without modifying application code, reducing setup time and minimizing performance impact.
• Unified visibility across modern environments
  Gain consistent insights across Kubernetes, virtual machines, and cloud infrastructure with process-level telemetry spanning services, containers, and hosts.
• Reduced operational complexity
  Automatically discover services and dependencies, eliminating manual configuration and reducing reliance on multiple tools.
• Improved cost efficiency and telemetry control
  Capture high-value telemetry at the source to reduce unnecessary data ingestion and optimize observability costs.

Fully Integrated with the New Relic Intelligent Observability Platform

New Relic eBPF integrates with the New Relic Intelligent Observability Platform, combining kernel-level telemetry with:

• OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation
• AI-powered insights and recommendations
• Cloud Cost Intelligence and telemetry optimization
• Service architecture intelligence and dependency mapping

This unified approach enables teams to move from reactive troubleshooting to faster, more precise root cause identification. 

Ready to start taking advantage of Kernel level visibility

New Relic eBPF is available as part of the New Relic Intelligent Observability Platform. Click here to get started. 

About New Relic

The New Relic Intelligent Observability Platform helps businesses eliminate interruptions in digital experiences by unifying telemetry data across the entire stack and applying AI-powered insights to optimize performance and control costs.