Grafana Beyla

Docs: https://grafana.com/docs/beyla/latest/

Beyla is a Grafana eBPF auto-instrumentation tool that captures HTTP/gRPC traffic and generates traces and metrics without modifying application code.

Requirements

• Linux kernel: 5.8+ with BTF (BPF Type Format) enabled
• Privileges: root or CAP_SYS_ADMIN; in Kubernetes must run in host PID namespace
• Architectures: x86_64, ARM64

Check BTF support:

ls /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux  # must exist

Supported Languages / Runtimes

Language	HTTP	gRPC	DB queries
Go	✅	✅	✅
Java (JVM)	✅	✅	✅
Python	✅	✅	-
Ruby	✅	-	-
Node.js	✅	-	-
.NET	✅	✅	-
Rust	✅	✅	-
C/C++	✅	-	-
PHP	✅	-	-

Installation

# Docker
docker run --privileged --pid=host \
  -v /sys/kernel/debug:/sys/kernel/debug:ro \
  -e BEYLA_OPEN_PORT=8080 \
  -e OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://otel-collector:4318 \
  grafana/beyla

# Kubernetes (Helm)
helm repo add grafana https://grafana.github.io/helm-charts
helm install beyla grafana/beyla \
  --set discovery.services[0].open_port=8080 \
  --set otelTraces.endpoint=http://tempo:4318

Configuration File

# beyla-config.yml
log_level: INFO

discovery:
  services:
    - name: my-app
      open_port: 8080
      # or by process name:
      # exe_path: /usr/bin/myapp
      # or by K8s pod metadata (auto-detected in K8s)

ebpf:
  wakeup_len: 100           # batch size for events
  track_request_headers: false  # enable to capture HTTP headers (high cardinality risk)
  high_request_volume: false    # optimize for high-traffic services

# Distributed tracing output (OTLP)
otel_traces_export:
  endpoint: http://tempo:4318  # HTTP OTLP endpoint
  # Or gRPC:
  # endpoint: tempo:4317
  # protocol: grpc

# Metrics output (Prometheus)
prometheus_export:
  port: 9090
  path: /metrics

# Or metrics via OTLP
otel_metrics_export:
  endpoint: http://prometheus-otlp:9090

Kubernetes Deployment

DaemonSet (recommended for cluster-wide)

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: beyla
  namespace: monitoring
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: beyla
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: beyla
    spec:
      hostPID: true          # required for eBPF
      serviceAccountName: beyla
      containers:
        - name: beyla
          image: grafana/beyla:latest
          securityContext:
            privileged: true   # or use specific capabilities
            # Alternative (non-privileged):
            # capabilities:
            #   add: [SYS_ADMIN, SYS_PTRACE, NET_ADMIN]
          env:
            - name: BEYLA_OPEN_PORT
              value: "8080"
            - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT
              value: "http://alloy:4318"
          volumeMounts:
            - name: sys-kernel-debug
              mountPath: /sys/kernel/debug
              readOnly: true
      volumes:
        - name: sys-kernel-debug
          hostPath:
            path: /sys/kernel/debug

Network Policies and RBAC

apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: beyla
  namespace: monitoring
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: beyla
rules:
  - apiGroups: [""]
    resources: [nodes, pods, services, endpoints, namespaces]
    verbs: [get, list, watch]

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
BEYLA_OPEN_PORT	Port(s) to instrument (e.g., 8080, 8080-8090)
BEYLA_EXECUTABLE_NAME	Process name pattern to instrument
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT	OTLP endpoint for traces and metrics
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL	grpc or http/protobuf (default)
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME	Override service name in spans
BEYLA_LOG_LEVEL	DEBUG, INFO, WARN, ERROR
BEYLA_PROMETHEUS_PORT	Port for Prometheus metrics scrape
BEYLA_PROMETHEUS_PATH	Path for Prometheus metrics (default /metrics)

Grafana Cloud Integration

# Using Alloy as the OTLP receiver
otel_traces_export:
  endpoint: http://alloy:4318   # Alloy forwards to Grafana Cloud Tempo

otel_metrics_export:
  endpoint: http://alloy:4318   # Alloy forwards to Grafana Cloud Prometheus

Via Alloy config:

otelcol.receiver.otlp "beyla" {
  http { endpoint = "0.0.0.0:4318" }
  output {
    traces  = [otelcol.exporter.otlp.grafana_cloud.input]
    metrics = [otelcol.exporter.prometheus.local.input]
  }
}

Routes Decorator (Cardinality Control)

Critical for production — prevents HTTP path cardinality explosion:

routes:
  patterns:
    - /user/{id}
    - /api/v1/resources/{resource_id}
  ignored_patterns:
    - /health
    - /metrics
  ignore_mode: traces    # or: metrics, both
  unmatched: heuristic   # or: path, wildcard, low-cardinality

unmatched strategies: heuristic (replaces numeric IDs, best default), low-cardinality (threshold-based collapsing), wildcard (/**), path (actual path — risk of explosion).

Trace Sampling

otel_traces_export:
  sampler:
    name: "parentbased_traceidratio"  # parent-aware fraction sampling
    arg: "0.1"    # 10% sampling — arg is a quoted string

Samplers: always_on, always_off, traceidratio, parentbased_always_on (default), parentbased_traceidratio.

Generated Metrics

Metric	Type	Description
http.server.request.duration	Histogram	Inbound HTTP request duration
http.client.request.duration	Histogram	Outbound HTTP request duration
rpc.server.duration	Histogram	gRPC server call duration
rpc.client.duration	Histogram	gRPC client call duration
db.client.operation.duration	Histogram	DB query duration

Labels: http.method, http.route, http.response.status_code, service.name, service.namespace

Kubernetes Auto-Discovery

In Kubernetes, Beyla auto-discovers pods and enriches telemetry with K8s metadata:

discovery:
  services:
    - k8s_namespace: "production"     # instrument all pods in namespace
    - k8s_pod_name: "frontend.*"      # by pod name regex
    - k8s_deployment_name: "api"      # by deployment name
    - open_port: 8080                 # or by port (any pod)

Auto-enriched span attributes: k8s.namespace.name, k8s.pod.name, k8s.node.name, k8s.deployment.name