maxenglander / ebpf-exporter-deploy

ebpf-exporter-deploy

Helm chart and Dockerfile to support running ebpf_exporter on Kubernetes.

Project Status

This project is:

• Maintained by Teachers Pay Teachers.
• Used in production by Teachers Pay Teachers.

Versioning

• Docker image tags match ebpf_exporter releases.
• The apiVersion of the Helm chart matches ebpf_exporter releases.
• Helm version follows semantic versioning and increments when there are changes to values.yaml.

Release Artifacts

• GitHub releases are published with either a ebpf-exporter-helm- or ebpf-exporter-docker- prefix, depending on whhat was changed.
• Docker images are published to Dockerhub.
• Helm charts are published to teacherspayteachers.github.io/helm-charts/..

Requirements

• Docker is required to build Docker images.
• Helm is required to lint and template the Helm chart.
• Helm releases require hosts to have Linux kernel source code or headers.
• Helm releases require elevated security privileges.

Why

Cloudflare's ebpf_exporter makes it easy to extract Prometheus metrics from eBPF programs. However, it does not contain production-ready Docker images.

ebpf_exporter_helm is a community Helm chart for ebpf_exporter. However, the author has told us over email that it is not maintained.

This repository contains a production-ready Docker image based on ebpf_exporter_dockerfile, and a maintained Helm chart based on ebpf_exporter_helm.

Usage

First, define a set of eBPF programs. See ebpf_exporter for the configuration format. Optionally, override any default values in values.yaml. For example:

config:
- programs:
  - name: cachestat
    metrics:
      counters:
        - name: page_cache_ops_total
          help: Page cache operation counters by type
          table: counts
          labels:
            - name: op
              size: 8
              decoders:
                - name: ksym
            - name: command
              size: 128
              decoders:
                - name: string
                - name: regexp
                  regexps:
                    - ^systemd-journal$
                    - ^syslog-ng$
    kprobes:
      add_to_page_cache_lru: do_count
      mark_page_accessed: do_count
      account_page_dirtied: do_count
      mark_buffer_dirty: do_count
    code: |
      #include <uapi/linux/ptrace.h>
  
      struct key_t {
          u64 ip;
          char command[128];
      };
  
      BPF_HASH(counts, struct key_t);
  
      int do_count(struct pt_regs *ctx) {
          struct key_t key = { .ip = PT_REGS_IP(ctx) - 1 };
          bpf_get_current_comm(&key.command, sizeof(key.command));
  
          counts.increment(key);
  
          return 0;
      }

Next, supply the programs to the Helm install command.

$ helm repo helm repo add tpt https://teacherspayteachers.github.io/helm-charts
$ helm install ebpf-exporter tpt/ebpf-exporter -f values.yaml

Metrics

See ebpf_exporter to understand how exported Prometheus metrics work.

Alternatives

• Cloudflare deploys ebpf_exporter directly on hosts in order to avoid having to bind-mount kernel sources and headers into Docker containers.
• Helm chart that this repository's Helm chart is based on.
• Alternative Dockerfile.

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT