Thorough observability is essential to a pain free cloud experience. Azure provides many general-purpose observability tools, but you may want to create custom tooling . Inspektor Gadget is an open-source framework that makes customizable data collection easy. Microsoft recently contributed new features to Inspektor Gadget that further enhance its modular framework, making it even easier to meet your specific systems inspection needs. Of course, we also made it easy for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) users to use.

Inspektor Gadget, a CNCF sandbox project, leverages eBPF. This is a powerful technology that allows developers to run sandboxed programs directly within the operating system kernel. Originally designed for network packet filtering, eBPF has evolved to support a wide range of use cases, including networking, observability, tracing, and security. eBPF provides flexibility, performance and safety features that Inspektor Gadget leverages to provide a suite of observability and troubleshooting tools (called gadgets) and a framework for data collection.

Microsoft has now added support for image-based gadgets using OCI to Inspektor Gadget. OCI (Open Container Initiative) is a project under the Linux Foundation that aims to create open standards for container image formats and runtimes. OCI images follow a consistent format, support packaging any artifacts (not just container apps), and can be managed by industry-standard tools (registries). With the addition of support of OCI images, Inspektor Gadget now allows for creating and managing Gadgets outside of the core development process enabling an ecosystem of Gadget developers and users.

While Inspektor Gadget exists on all AKS nodes, the work is not limited to AKS.  Inspektor Gadget is an open-source project and leverages existing standards to enhance interoperability. If you want to explore how you can benefit from this work in other environments, we recommend the post on the Inspektor Gadget blog: Empowering Observability: The Advent of Image-Based Gadgets | Inspektor Gadget (inspektor-gadget.io).

The addition of support for OCI images to Inspektor Gadget enhances its utility as a framework for observability of your Kubernetes nodes and Linux hosts. Microsoft is continuing to invest in this work, plans include expanded support for OpenTelemetry tracing and integration with the Headlamp Kubernetes UI. That said, it is open source, come and join us. 

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