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How eBPF in Oracle Linux Redefines Secure System Observability
Every millisecond, modern cloud-native infrastructures handle thousands of events — network packets traverse nodes, applications execute system calls, security policies enforce constraints. Yet, the challenge has always been deep observability without compromise on performance. This was precisely the problem facing engineers at Facebook, who needed to debug high-volume traffic at scale without intrusive kernel modifications. Their solution? eBPF — Extended Berkeley Packet Filter — a revolutionary way to extend and trace the Linux kernel dynamically.
Today, eBPF is the backbone of secure, high-performance monitoring and policy enforcement in Linux environments, including Oracle Linux. By allowing safe, event-driven execution of code directly in the kernel, eBPF enables observability, security, and performance enhancements without modifying kernel source code. This blog explores the enterprise architectural rationale, the computer science behind it, its technical implementation in Oracle Linux, and how to extend its capabilities using shell scripting.
The Enterprise Architecture View: eBPF in Secure, Scalable Observability
Traditional observability methods often fall into one of two categories: user-space logging, which is resource-intensive…
