Preview
We're still working on this feature, but we'd love for you to try it out!
This feature is currently provided as part of a preview pursuant to our pre-release policies. It is not available to customers subject to HIPAA or FedRAMP regulations.
You can install the New Relic eBPF agent on your Linux host to monitor your entire system health. The eBPF agent provides deep visibility into application performance without requiring code changes or deploying language-specific agents.
Compatibility and requirements
- Linux kernel versions
5.4and later. - Root privileges
- Support
arm64andx86-64architectures. - A minimum of
2 GBof RAM is required for host installations. - Supports the following distributions:
- Ubuntu
20.04and later - Debian
11and later - CentOS Stream
9and later - RHEL
8and later
- Ubuntu
Install the eBPF agent
To install the eBPF agent:
Log in to your New Relic account.
Go to left navigation pane > + Integration & Agents > eBPF Agent.
On the Select an account screen, select the account you want to install the eBPF agent on, and click Continue.
On the Select an installation method page, select On a host, and click Continue.
On the Enter your user key screen, select one of the following options, then click Continue:
- Use an existing key: If you already have a user key, provide the user key. For more information, refer to User keys.
- Create a new key: If you don't have a user key, click Create a new key to create one.
On the Configure the host integration screen, enter the deployment name for host, then click Continue.
On the Install the agent screen, run the provided command in your terminal to install the eBPF agent.
Copy and paste the displayed command to install the eBPF agent on your host.
To verify the installation, run the following command:
For eBPF agent:
bash$sudo systemctl status newrelic-ebpf-agentFor eBPF client:
bash$sudo systemctl status newrelic-ebpf-agent-client
Upon successful installation, the status of these services display as active (running).
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You can customize the eBPF agent configuration by editing the
newrelic-ebpf-agent.conffile available at/etc/newrelic-ebpf-agent/newrelic-ebpf-agent.conf. For more information on the configuration parameters, refer to Configuration parameters.
Access the eBPF data in New Relic
Once the eBPF agent is installed, it automatically starts collecting data from your Linux host. You can access this data in New Relic's OpenTelemetry UI. For more information on New Relic OpenTelemetry UI, refer OpenTelemetry APM UI.
To view the eBPF data in New Relic:
- Go to one.newrelic.com > APM & Services.
- In the search banner, set the search criteria as
instrumentation.name = nr_ebpf:
Configure the eBPF Dashboard
The eBPF Network dashboard provides deep visibility into your system's network health by tracking critical DNS and TCP metrics directly from the kernel. You can diagnose connectivity issues by analyzing success and failure rates for DNS resolutions and TCP connections. Pinpoint performance bottlenecks by monitoring key latencies like TCP handshakes, packet delivery, and the duration of short-lived connections. The dashboard also helps you track data throughput by visualizing bytes sent, received, and any packets dropped.
To configure the eBPF network dashboard:
- Go to one.newrelic.com > Dashboards.
- In the Dashboards, click + Create a dashboard.
- In the Create a dashboard window, click Browse pre-built dashboards.
- In the search bar, type eBPF and select the eBPF.
- (Optional) In the displayed window, click Edit to change the account.
- Click Setup eBPF Agent to setup the data source or click Skip this step if the eBPF agent is already setup.
- Click View dashboard to view the data collected by the eBPF agent.
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The eBPF agent automatically generates entity names differently depending on the environment:
In hosts or Docker, these names are a combination of the process name, its directory or container ID, and the listening port. For example,
ruby:/home/ubuntu/app:[5678]orjava:f4aead533895:[8080].In Kubernetes, these names are derived from the service name for example,
mysql-database-service.
Configuration parameters
The newrelic-ebpf-agent.conf file contains the following configuration parameters: