The New Relic eBPF APM is our standard for no-code, language-agnostic application monitoring. It automatically discovers all services running on your hosts or Kubernetes nodes and populates the New Relic APM UI with performance data, giving you complete visibility into your application landscape without any manual instrumentation or code changes.
The eBPF APM operates directly from the Linux kernel using eBPF technology, providing comprehensive monitoring coverage for unknown workloads, legacy applications, third-party services, and any application regardless of programming language. This makes it ideal for platform engineers who need complete inventory visibility across their entire infrastructure.
Key features
Automatic service discovery: Continuously discovers and maps all running application services across your entire infrastructure, providing a real-time view of your architecture. This includes unknown workloads, third-party applications, and services deployed without your knowledge, ensuring complete visibility across your estate.
Zero-code instrumentation: Delivers deep visibility into application performance (including MELT data) without modifying application code or deploying language-specific agents, eliminating operational overhead and accelerating time-to-value.
Broad environment support: Offers comprehensive support for Linux hosts (various distros) and Kubernetes clusters, across both x86 and ARM64 architectures.
Advanced transaction tracing: Supports detailed segment linking for Java applications, breaking down transactions into individual components (application code, database calls, external service calls) to pinpoint performance bottlenecks.
Use cases
For platform engineers: Get an immediate and complete inventory of all services running on your platform, even those you don't own or that were deployed without your knowledge.
For teams with opaque workloads: Instantly monitor legacy applications, third-party binaries, or services written in languages where you can't (or don't want to) modify the code.
For full-environment coverage: Complement your existing APM instrumentation by using eBPF APM to cover all the services that are not manually instrumented, ensuring 100% visibility.
View your eBPF APM data in New Relic
You can view eBPF APM monitoring data in the New Relic APM UI:
- Go to one.newrelic.com > APM & Services.
- Select the desired eBPF APM entity from the services list.
- Navigate through the standard APM UI sections for performance analysis.
Sugerencia
The eBPF agent automatically generates entity names based on your environment:
- In hosts or Docker: Names combine process name, directory path or container ID, and listening port. Examples:
ruby:/home/ubuntu/app:[5678]orjava:f4aead533895:[8080] - In Kubernetes: Names are derived from service names, like
mysql-database-service
Custom application naming:
- Set the
NEW_RELIC_APP_NAMEenvironment variable for both Docker containers and host applications
Transition from eBPF APM to traditional APM
When you're ready to get deeper insights for critical applications, you can seamlessly transition from eBPF APM monitoring to traditional New Relic APM agents. This transition path allows you to:
Start with broad coverage: Use eBPF APM to quickly identify all services and understand your application landscape without any code changes.
Prioritize instrumentation efforts: Focus your APM deployment on the most critical services identified through eBPF APM monitoring.
Maintain continuous visibility: Keep eBPF APM running for less critical services while adding detailed APM instrumentation to high-priority applications.
Avoid monitoring gaps: The expansion can be done gradually without losing observability, as both eBPF APM and APM can run simultaneously on the same infrastructure.
This hybrid approach ensures you get comprehensive coverage quickly while still having the option to add deeper instrumentation where it matters most.