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System requirements

Before setting up zymtrace, ensure the following requirements are met:

Supported systems and kernels​

The backend and profiler are compatible with both x86_64 and ARM64 CPU architectures. However, the profiler has specific minimum kernel version requirements:

  • x86_64: Kernel 4.19 or higher
  • ARM64: Kernel 5.5 or higher

To check your machine's kernel version, run the following command:

uname -a

In addition to meeting the minimum version requirements, the kernel must be compiled with BPF Type Format (BTF) support. Most modern Linux distributions enable BTF by default. To verify BTF support, check for the presence of the file:

/sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux

Learn more from this page.

System privileges​

The zymtrace profiler requires the CAP_SYS_ADMIN capability, which typically means the profiler must run as the root user or within a privileged container when deployed in Kubernetes environments. Since eBPF programs access raw kernel memory, running the agent in more restricted environments is not currently possible.

Operating systems​

The backend and profiler are designed specifically for Linux environments and work on the following distributions:

  • RHEL 8.2+
  • Amazon Linux 2
  • Ubuntu 20.10+
  • Debian 11+
  • Fedora 31+
  • OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
  • Arch Linux (from kernel 5.7.1.arch1-1)
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Windows OS is not supported. Our software is optimized for Linux environments only.

Also, while zymtrace may function on other Linux distributions, we only provide official support and testing for the platforms listed above.

Supported Environments​

  • Docker Swarm
  • Bare metal or cloud/VM environments
  • Kubernetes environments:
    • AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS on EC2)
    • Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
    • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
    • K3s
    • Bare-metal Kubernetes installations
    • OpenShift clusters

Limitations​

  • Docker-in-Docker environments such as MiniKube are not supported due to eBPF limitations.
  • You may also run into aio max exceptions in Scylla in docker-in-docker environments. You may apply this workaround.
  • The profiler does not support MacOS
  • WSL1 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is not supported

Cloud Compatibility​

zymtrace works on any cloud platform as long as you are using standard Linux VMs. The profiling agent does not work on serverless environments.

We plan to add cloud cost correlation in the future. This feature will be limited to AWS and Azure only, as GCP does not provide the billing API functionality we need.

Install zymtrace​

zymtrace backend (On-Premises)​

Refer to our on-premises installation guide for detailed instructions.

zymtrace profiler​

Refer to the profiler host agent installation guide for more details.