SMC Journal

Get Continuous Performance Profiling Metrics With eBPF

The extended Berkeley packet filter (eBPF) is a powerful tool for continuous performance profiling and monitoring of complex systems, providing valuable metrics and insights for performance engineers and enabling early issue detection and resolution in a DevOps culture.
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Key insights
🚀 Frederick Branik discusses the benefits of using eBPF for isolating and fixing poor performing code, highlighting its potential for improving performance engineering.
🔄 eBPF is uniquely positioned to capture profiling data, making it a valuable addition to tools like Prometheus for performance analysis and optimization.
📊 eBPF allows us to capture stack traces and build statistics in real-time, providing valuable insights into the execution of programs.
💡 eBPF provides a flexible framework for instrumentation, allowing developers to create custom hooks and perform a wide range of tasks, similar to traditional instrumentation methods.
💡 eBPF allows developers to measure various aspects of their code, such as RPC calls and memory allocations, providing flexibility in performance profiling.
💡 eBPF enables observability without instrumentation, automatically capturing latency from specific network packets, such as MySQL queries, offering a new approach to performance profiling.
🤔 The use of eBPF as a technology for building a profiler allows for selective data collection, ensuring that only the necessary data is gathered, reducing unnecessary overhead.
🗣️ Customers have expressed that eBPF is the only way to achieve continuous profiling, highlighting its importance and effectiveness.
Show Notes
Polar Signals Cloud is an always-on, zero-instrumentation continuous profiling product that points you to where in your code CPU time is spent, and helps you maintain an efficient system in the long run. The product is based on the open-source Parca project and is now generally available!
https://www.polarsignals.com/
https://www.parca.dev/docs/overview/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by OpenText - the Information Company. We power and protect information. Our purpose is to elevate every person and every organization to gain the information advantage. OpenText works to power the ubiquitous information around us to elevate everyone. We strive to help customers simplify their systems with frictionless automation and equip them to thrive and grow in a digital world. The LoadRunner family is one of many solutions areas where OpenText can help. Did you know that the LoadRunner family has the largest community of load testing practitioners in the world? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
This podcast is sponsored by West Networks. Do you need unbreakable network connectivity? West Networks can help! They are a leading provider of Peplink-based SD-WAN solutions. They can help you achieve unbreakable connectivity by utilizing Peplink’s SpeedFusion Bandwidth Bonding technology.
Mobile Health Customers: Since 2012, West Networks has been assisting those in Mobile Health Services space by providing communities with access to life-saving technology.
Mobile Command Unit or First Responders: West Networks works with mobile command field units, like First Responders and new agencies, delivering faster and reliable access to mission critical information all the time.
Mobile Workers: Whether you're an IT professional who needs to work from anywhere, or a full-time vacationing traveler in the RV community, West Networks can help you stay connected all the time.
For The Enterprise: Large Enterprises can save up to 83% off of costs while expanding communications and reliability beyond a single carrier with West Networks' Peplink-based SD-WAN solutions. We can help you replace expensive MPLS connections with SpeedFusion Site-to-Site Unbreakable VPN technology.
http://bit.ly/westnetworks
Connect with me 👋  
TWITTER                                    ►  https://bit.ly/3HmWF8d   LINKEDIN COMPANY                ►  https://bit.ly/3kICS9g   LINKEDIN PROFILE                   ►  https://bit.ly/30Eshp7
Want to support the show? Buy Me A Coffee! https://bit.ly/3NadcPK
🔗 Links:
- Scott Moore Consulting: https://scottmoore.consulting- Perftour Website:             https://theperformancetour.com- SMC Journal:                    https://smcjournal.com- DevOps Driving:               https://devopsdriving.com- Security Champions        https://thesecuritychampions.com

See The Future Of Remote Access For Developers

NearEDGE is a solution for managing and troubleshooting compute infrastructure and software assets - giving remote access to software assets in the cloud, with strong security practices and minimal friction for developers.
GUEST: Claude Robitaille, CEO NearEDGELINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clauderobitailleeng/
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Want to support the show? Buy Me A Coffee! https://bit.ly/3NadcPK
Show Notes
NearEDGE is a solution for managing and troubleshooting compute infrastructure and software assets. It is designed to be secure, reliable, and easy to use.
https://nearedge.net/Solution/infrastructure
NearEDGE consists of two components:
The endpoint component is a lightweight agent that runs on the endpoint device. It is responsible for collecting data about the endpoint and sending it to the control center.
The control center is a web-based application that provides a central location for managing and troubleshooting endpoints.
NearEDGE is designed to be agnostic to the deployment environment. It can be deployed on any device that has an internet connection, including physical servers, virtual machines, and cloud-based instances.
Insights
🎯The future of remote access for developers is a topic of discussion, covering various aspects such as security, AI, testing, tuning, optimization, and observability.
🌐There is a need for a lightweight end point that can facilitate remote access in a zero trust environment, allowing developers to efficiently and effectively access resources.
💻The shift towards software-based solutions has led Near Edge to focus on addressing the challenges faced by developers in remote access and management of physical computers.
🤖The agent software used in remote workloads is extremely CICD friendly, allowing for efficient continuous integration and continuous deployment processes.
💻By intercepting native TCP connections, developers can seamlessly use familiar tools like SSH and VS code to access and operate various workloads.
⚙️ The ability to set breakpoints and debug code in real-time using a debugger enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the development process.
💻Virtual tapping goes beyond traditional network tapping by allowing developers to interact live with applications inside the container, including profiling and other capabilities.
Key Moments
🔮05:32 NearEdge offers a solution called NOAH that allows developers to securely access their software and workloads remotely, reducing the need for extensive deployment involvement. Expand
🔑07:51 Developers can remotely access machines, use tools like VS code and wire shark, and easily find IP addresses without needing to understand the underlying workings by utilizing a gateway for TCP connection transport. Expand
📺11:12 Developers can now debug Python code in containers using VS code without a special agent or VPN, as demonstrated in the video. Expand
🔒13:42 The future of remote access for developers allows for secure and protected data transfer, with control remaining with the infrastructure team and enabling live interaction with applications. Expand
🔒18:01 This solution enables software deployment without internet access by utilizing reverse and forward proxies, allowing for management of the software while restricting traffic to only move through the proxies. Expand
👀19:56 The speaker asks for feedback on whether remote access to software assets in the cloud is the future and encourages viewers to suggest topics for future shows.
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape. They are the makers of Saltworks SaltMiner, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views.
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements. SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery. https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks
This podcast is sponsored by West Networks. Do you need unbreakable network connectivity? West Networks can help! They are a leading provider of Peplink-based SD-WAN solutions. They can help you achieve unbreakable connectivity by utilizing Peplink’s SpeedFusion Bandwidth Bonding technology.
Mobile Health Customers: Since 2012, West Networks has been assisting those in Mobile Health Services space by providing communities with access to life-saving technology.
Mobile Command Unit or First Responders: West Networks works with mobile command field units, like First Responders and new agencies, delivering faster and reliable access to mission critical information all the time.
Mobile Workers: Whether you're an IT professional who needs to work from anywhere, or a full-time vacationing traveler in the RV community, West Networks can help you stay connected all the time.
For The Enterprise: Large Enterprises can save up to 83% off of costs while expanding communications and reliability beyond a single carrier with West Networks' Peplink-based SD-WAN solutions. We can help you replace expensive MPLS connections with SpeedFusion Site-to-Site Unbreakable VPN technology.
http://bit.ly/westnetworks
Connect with me 👋  
TWITTER                                    ►  https://bit.ly/3HmWF8d 
LINKEDIN COMPANY              ►  https://bit.ly/3kICS9g 
LINKEDIN PROFILE                   ► https://bit.ly/30Eshp7 
🔗 Links:
Scott Moore Consulting: https://scottmoore.consulting
Perftour Website:            https://theperformancetour.com
SMC Journal:                  https://smcjournal.com
DevOps Driving:       https://devopsdriving.com
Security Champions        https://thesecuritychampions.com 

Conferences For Performance Engineers

Alex Podelko, a senior performance engineer at Amazon Web Services, discusses the biggest changes in performance testing in the last three to five years. He highlights the importance of continuous testing and monitoring in the cloud and agile development era, as well as the challenges of developing a one-size-fits-all approach to continuous performance testing. He also calls for the academic community to be more involved in developing new solutions for this emerging field.
Insights
☁️ Load testing and performance engineering have become more important as industries move to the cloud, agile development, and continuous deployments.
👁️ Continuous testing and monitoring are essential in this environment.
🧩 There is no one-size-fits-all approach to continuous performance testing, as it requires new methods, statistical analysis, and AI.
🎓 The academic community needs to be more involved in developing new solutions for continuous performance testing.
🗓️ There are a few academic conferences devoted to performance, but they are not enough.
🔥 Like and Subscribe 🔥
Connect with me 👋
TWITTER ► https://bit.ly/3HmWF8d
LINKEDIN COMPANY ► https://bit.ly/3kICS9g
LINKEDIN PROFILE ► https://bit.ly/30Eshp7
Want to support the show? Buy Me A Coffee! https://bit.ly/3NadcPK
🔗 Links:
- Scott Moore Consulting: https://scottmoore.consulting
- Perftour Website: https://theperformancetour.com
- SMC Journal: https://smcjournal.com
- DevOps Driving: https://devopsdriving.com
- Security Champions https://thesecuritychampions.com
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by OpenText - the Information Company. We power and protect information. Our purpose is to elevate every person and every organization to gain the information advantage. OpenText works to power the ubiquitous information around us to elevate everyone. We strive to help customers simplify their systems with frictionless automation and equip them to thrive and grow in a digital world. The LoadRunner family is one of many solutions areas where OpenText can help. Did you know that the LoadRunner family has the largest community of load testing practitioners in the world? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
This podcast is sponsored by West Networks. Do you need unbreakable network connectivity? West Networks can help! They are a leading provider of Peplink-based SD-WAN solutions. They can help you achieve unbreakable connectivity by utilizing Peplink’s SpeedFusion Bandwidth Bonding technology.
**Mobile Health Customers:**
Since 2012, West Networks has been assisting those in Mobile Health Services space by providing communities with access to life-saving technology.
**Mobile Command Unit or First Responders:**
West Networks works with mobile command field units, like First Responders and new agencies, delivering faster and reliable access to mission critical information all the time.
**Mobile Workers:**
Whether you're an IT professional who needs to work from anywhere, or a full-time vacationing traveler in the RV community, West Networks can help you stay connected all the time.
**For The Enterprise:**
Large Enterprises can save up to 83% off of costs while expanding communications and reliability beyond a single carrier with West Networks' Peplink-based SD-WAN solutions. We can help you replace expensive MPLS connections with SpeedFusion Site-to-Site Unbreakable VPN technology.
http://bit.ly/westnetworks

Get A Career In DevSecOps

Want to move your career into the DevSecOps space? Are you wondering what it takes to get a job Cybersecurity or where to start? Scott Moore interviews Tim Chase - Field CISO at Lacework about this very topic and how he switched over from performance engineering to security testing.
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
Show Notes
GUEST: Tim ChaseLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timchase2/
Security Classes by Tim Chase on LinkedIn:
DevSecOps Foundations: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/devops-foundations-devsecops
The rise of continuous application security: https://www.linkedin.com/learning/devsecops-continuous-application-security/the-rise-of-continuous-application-security
Latest Blog from the Cloud Security Alliance: https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/blog/2023/08/22/new-research-suggests-unseen-benefits-of-devsecops/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape. They are the makers of Saltworks SaltMiner, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views.
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements. SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery.
https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks

Get This JMeter Plugin

The Throughput Shaping Timer JMeter plugin makes it easy to crate a test scenario that will produce a desired number of requests per second (RPS). Scott interviews the author of this plugin. They also discuss the importance of contributing to the JMeter open source project. 
GUEST:  Jakub (Kuba) DeringLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kuba-dering/
Show Notes
JMeter Throughput Shaping Timer plugin:https://jmeter-plugins.org/wiki/ThroughputShapingTimer/
Jakub's Track Talk at AutomationSTAR:https://automation.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/event/2023/performance-testing-you-didnt-know-your-automation-test-does/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by OpenText - the Information Company. We power and protect information. Our purpose is to elevate every person and every organization to gain the information advantage. OpenText works to power the ubiquitous information around us to elevate everyone. We strive to help customers simplify their systems with frictionless automation and equip them to thrive and grow in a digital world. The LoadRunner family is one of many solutions areas where OpenText can help. Did you know that the LoadRunner family has the largest community of load testing practitioners in the world? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO

Learn How To Scale Kubernetes

In this episode, we take each component of Kubernetes and determine how to make it scale. Scott interviews the CTO of PerfectScale on how to optimize Kubernetes deployed applications.
Show Notes
GUEST: Eli BirgerLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-birger-44aa8717/
Perfect Scale: https://www.perfectscale.io/
OpenAI - Scaling Kubernetes to 7500 Nodes: https://openai.com/research/scaling-kubernetes-to-7500-nodes
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape. They are the makers of Saltworks SaltMiner, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views.
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements. SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery.
https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks

Implement Service Virtualization Into DevOps Today

Service Virtualization or Mocking is crucial to the model application development lifecycle. Scott interviews the CEO of Speedscale about the importance of implementing mocking and how to do it properly. This includes imitating API calls that perform poorly.
GUEST:  Ken Ahrens, CEO of Speedscale
LINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kahrens/
Show Notes
Speedscale Service Mockinghttps://docs.speedscale.com/concepts/service_mocking/
Wiremockhttps://wiremock.org/
OpenText Service Virtualizationhttps://www.microfocus.com/en-us/products/service-virtualization/overview 
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by OpenText - the Information Company. We power and protect information. Our purpose is to elevate every person and every organization to gain the information advantage. OpenText works to power the ubiquitous information around us to elevate everyone. We strive to help customers simplify their systems with frictionless automation and equip them to thrive and grow in a digital world. The LoadRunner family is one of many solutions areas where OpenText can help. Did you know that the LoadRunner family has the largest community of load testing practitioners in the world? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview
Performance Playlist (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlUdEXI83_XoQrAsCj2A92v5AmXqVfoIO

Blackhat and Defcon 2023 Coverage

As part of his Blackhat and Defcon conference coverage, Scott interviews Alex Waintraub and Thomas Plank on application security topics. They cover ransomware, data tampering detection, and the impact of AI on #Appsec.
Show Notes
New Jersey Cyber Fireside: http://www.cyberfiresidenj.com/Tributech - https://www.tributech.io/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape.  They are the makers of Saltworks SaltMiner, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views. 
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements.  SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery. https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks

AI Driven End-To-End Automated Testing

Modern applications  are more complex than ever. This means more testing to get the best coverage and reduce risk. It's overwhelming. Will AI make test automation faster, easier, and better? Scott Moore talks to the founder and CEO of TestGrid to find out.
LINK TO EMBEDDED YOUTUBE VIDEO
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
GUEST:  Harry RaoLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harryceotestgrid/
Show Notes
Testgrid: https://testgrid.io/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by OpenText - the Information Company. We power and protect information. Our purpose is to elevate every person and every organization to gain the information advantage. OpenText works to power the ubiquitous information around us to elevate everyone. We strive to help customers simplify their systems with frictionless automation and equip them to thrive and grow in a digital world. The LoadRunner family is one of many solutions areas where OpenText can help. Did you know that the LoadRunner family has the largest community of load testing practitioners in the world? Join the community at http://bit.ly/435Y5Po
Performance Engineering The LoadRunner Family Page:
https://www.microfocus.com/en-us/portfolio/performance-engineering/overview

Performance Budgets

Performance budgets are an important control mechanism to keep web applications fast and efficient. Tammy Everts shares how to set them up and apply the latest practices for great results.
Support the SMC Journal. Buy Me A Coffee: https://bit.ly/smcjournalcoffee
GUEST: Tammy EvertsLINKEDIN PROFILE: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tammyeverts/
Show Notes
Tammy Everts Website: https://tammyeverts.wordpress.com/
Performance budgets -https://www.speedcurve.com/blog/performance-budgets/
Performance budgets, pragmatically - https://csswizardry.com/2020/01/performance-budgets-pragmatically/
Page bloat - https://www.speedcurve.com/blog/page-bloat-web-performance/
Performance inequality gap - https://infrequently.org/2022/12/performance-baseline-2023/
Performance plateau - https://www.speedcurve.com/blog/web-performance-poverty-line/
WPOstats - https://wpostats.com/
Sponsors
This podcast is sponsored by Saltworks Security. For almost 10 years, Saltworks Security has delivered world class application security services and products, designed to help enterprises secure their applications from policy to production in an ever-changing security landscape. They are the makers of Saltworks Saltminer, an application security management platform, designed by security professionals, for security professionals.
SaltMiner aggregates and normalizes issues found by many different solutions then enriches that data with business context. SaltMiner gives team members from the C-suite, security and development teams the ability to manage their application security program through customizable views.
The Saltworks SaltMiner Community Edition is a free Penetration Testing Management and Delivery application. It provides teams with custom reporting for potentially thousands of end users, red team support and the ability to manage new and retesting of engagements. SaltMiner Community Edition also allows teams to enforce both testing methodologies and custom vulnerability databases for consistency in engagement delivery.
https://bit.ly/smcsaltworks