Demo/poster abstract: Efficient and flexible packet tracing for virtualized networks using eBPF

As the scale of cloud systems continues to grow, virtualized networks are becoming increasingly important to the performance and reliability of the cloud. Despite many advantages, virtualized networks introduce additional layers of abstraction and are more difficult to monitor and diagnose performance issues compared to traditional networks. Furthermore, it is challenging to reason about the dynamic performance of virtualized networks. Therefore, there is a great need for fine-grained, user customizable, and reconfigurable network tracing. To address the above challenges, we propose vNetTracer, an efficient and programmable packet profiler for virtualized networks. vNetTracer relies on the extended Berkeley Packet Filter (eBPF) to dynamically attach user-defined tracing scripts into a live virtualized network without any changes to user programs nor restarting the monitored network. Through case studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness of vNetTracer in diagnosing various virtualized networking problems.