OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation: Zero-Code Observability Under 2% Overhead (Production Guide 2025)
48.5% of organizations are already using OpenTelemetry. Another 25.3% want to implement it but are stuck—blocked by the biggest adoption barrier: instrumenting existing applications requires code changes, rebuilds, and coordination across every team. In November 2025, OpenTelemetry released an answer: eBPF Instrumentation (OBI), which instruments every application in your cluster—Go, Java, Python, Node.js, Ruby—without touching a single line of code. Here's how to deploy it in production, what it can and can't do, and when you still need SDK instrumentation.
🎙️ Listen to the podcast episode: OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation: Zero-Code Observability Under 2% Overhead - Jordan and Alex investigate how eBPF delivers complete observability without code changes and the TLS encryption catch nobody talks about.