Chainguard Container for grafana-beyla

Open source eBPF-based auto-instrumentation tool that helps you easily get started with application observability

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/grafana-beyla:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard Image for Grafana Beyla is meant to serve as a drop-in replacement for the official Grafana Beyla image. Like most other Chainguard Images, this image has few-to-zero CVEs and does not run as the root user.

Since Beyla uses eBPF to instrument applications, it requires certain kernel capabilities to run. When deploying with Docker or Kubernetes, you'll need to provide the necessary privileges.

Getting Started

Grafana Beyla automatically instruments your applications using eBPF to provide instant observability without code changes. It can be deployed as a sidecar or standalone container.

Using Docker to Deploy

To run Beyla with Docker, you need to provide the necessary capabilities and mount the host's /sys filesystem:

docker run --rm --privileged \
  -v /sys/kernel/debug:/sys/kernel/debug:ro \
  cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/grafana-beyla:latest

Using Kubernetes to Deploy

For Kubernetes deployments, Beyla can run as a DaemonSet or sidecar. Here's an example DaemonSet configuration:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: beyla
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: beyla
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: beyla
    spec:
      hostPID: true
      containers:
      - name: beyla
        image: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/grafana-beyla:latest
        securityContext:
          privileged: true
        env:
        - name: BEYLA_KUBERNETES_ENABLE
          value: "true"
        - name: BEYLA_METRICS_ENDPOINT
          value: "0.0.0.0:9090"
        volumeMounts:
        - name: sys-kernel-debug
          mountPath: /sys/kernel/debug
      volumes:
      - name: sys-kernel-debug
        hostPath:
          path: /sys/kernel/debug

Also you can use the official helm chart to deploy Beyla in your Kubernetes cluster. More details can be found in the Beyla Helm Chart documentation.

In addition to that you can find lots of quick start examples in the Beyla quickstart guides documentation.

Configuration

Beyla can be configured through environment variables or a configuration file. Key configuration options include:

• BEYLA_OPEN_PORT: The port of the application to instrument
• BEYLA_SERVICE_NAME: Name for the instrumented service
• BEYLA_METRICS_ENDPOINT: Prometheus metrics endpoint
• BEYLA_TRACES_ENDPOINT: OpenTelemetry traces endpoint
• BEYLA_KUBERNETES_ENABLE: Enable Kubernetes metadata enrichment

You can find more options in the official documentation.

Documentation and Resources

• Grafana Beyla documentation
• Grafana Beyla GitHub repository

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.