Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Don't miss out! Join us at our next KubeCon + CloudNativeCon events in Shanghai, China (8-9 September, 2026) and Salt Lake City, United States (Nov 9–12, 2026). Connect with our current graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects as the community gathers to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. Learn more at kubecon.io
Beyond Power and Magic: Forging Stable eBPF Tools for the Post-Demon King Era - Kenta Tada, CNCF End User Technical Advisory Board & Carla Gaggini, Isovalent at Cisco
The Demon King is dead. The cluster is stable... until the next kernel upgrade.
In the early days, eBPF felt like powerful magic—quick, flexible, and capable of solving deep system problems. But as eBPF tools enter production, the focus shifts to durability. Your spells must survive kernel upgrades, platform changes, and continuous operation. The challenge isn't what eBPF can do, but how to make it stable.
This talk takes a “post-game” RPG approach to eBPF, exploring the challenges that arise after the main quest. We’ll compare classic spells like kprobes and tracepoints with newer magical contracts like fentry/fexit and kfuncs, analyzing their long-term stability. We’ll uncover how BTF and CO-RE act as ancient runes, allowing programs to adapt across kernels without constant rewrites. Finally, we'll share practical lessons on choosing the right abstractions so your tools survive every unexpected boss fight. Our party of platform engineers will learn to wield this magic sustainably!
Don't miss out! Join us at our next KubeCon + CloudNativeCon events in Shanghai, China (8-9 September, 2026) and Salt Lake City, United States (Nov 9–12, 2026). Connect with our current graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects as the community gathers to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing. Learn more at kubecon.io
Beyond Power and Magic: Forging Stable eBPF Tools for the Post-Demon King Era - Kenta Tada, CNCF End User Technical Advisory Board & Carla Gaggini, Isovalent at Cisco
The Demon King is dead. The cluster is stable... until the next kernel upgrade.
In the early days, eBPF felt like powerful magic—quick, flexible, and capable of solving deep system problems. But as eBPF tools enter production, the focus shifts to durability. Your spells must survive kernel upgrades, platform changes, and continuous operation. The challenge isn't what eBPF can do, but how to make it stable.
This talk takes a “post-game” RPG approach to eBPF, exploring the challenges that arise after the main quest. We’ll compare classic spells like kprobes and tracepoints with newer magical contracts like fentry/fexit and kfuncs, analyzing their long-term stability. We’ll uncover how BTF and CO-RE act as ancient runes, allowing programs to adapt across kernels without constant rewrites. Finally, we'll share practical lessons on choosing the right abstractions so your tools survive every unexpected boss fight. Our party of platform engineers will learn to wield this magic sustainably!
