Auto-instrument HTTP and gRPC services for RED metrics and traces using Grafana Beyla eBPF without modifying application code

Steps

1. Verify the Linux kernel is 5.8 or later with BTF enabled (most distros enable BTF by default from kernel 5.14+); check with ls /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux
2. Run Beyla as a sidecar container or DaemonSet with the BEYLA_OPEN_PORT or BEYLA_EXECUTABLE_NAME environment variable set to identify the target process
3. Configure Beyla's exporter section to send OTLP traces and metrics to an OTel Collector or Grafana Cloud endpoint, or use the Prometheus exporter for a local scrape
4. To use Beyla inside Grafana Alloy, add a beyla.ebpf block specifying open_port or exe_path, a kubernetes metadata block for pod enrichment, and a forward_to pointing to your otelcol.exporter
5. Beyla automatically emits http.server.request.duration, rpc.server.duration, and related OTel semantic convention metrics; import the provided Grafana dashboard for RED visualization
6. Enable trace context propagation in Beyla so that eBPF-captured spans carry the same traceparent as application-level spans, allowing correlation in Tempo or Jaeger