Elastic Universal Profiling™, a continuous profiling solution, is now GA

In a world where software is ubiquitous and its impact is profound, the importance of efficiency extends beyond just the boundaries of the business. Efficient software is not only good for businesses; it’s also good for the planet. By making computational efficiency a core objective and empowering professionals with the right tools to achieve it, we're not only driving toward more profitable business outcomes, but also fostering a more responsible and sustainable future. 

Driven by our focus on optimizing computational efficiency –– resulting in measurable cost-savings and a reduction in the carbon footprint for our customers –– Elastic Observability charts new frontiers in sustainable software engineering. Today, we're thrilled to announce the general availability of Elastic^® Universal Profiling, an observability solution that embodies our commitment to sustainable software development and operations. 

Elastic Universal Profiling is a whole-system, always-on, continuous profiling solution that eliminates the need for code instrumentation, recompilation, on-host debug symbols, or service restarts. Leveraging eBPF, Universal Profiling operates within the Linux kernel space, capturing only the needed data with minimal overhead in an unobtrusive manner. It profiles every line of code running on the machine –– including not only your application code but the kernel and third-party libraries –– thereby providing deep, whole-system code visibility across your entire fleet, so you can eliminate the guesswork.

Further, Elastic Universal Profiling is designed to help organizations run efficient services by minimizing computational wastage. To this end, it measures code efficiency in three dimensions: CPU utilization, CO2, and cloud cost. This approach resonates with the sustainability objectives of our customers –– ensuring that Elastic Universal Profiling aligns seamlessly with their strategic ESG goals.

The need for energy-efficient software is becoming increasingly significant, mirroring the well-established practice of certifying hardware for energy efficiency. However, the process of certifying software as energy efficient is complicated, as there are no reliable methods to measure how code efficiency relates to carbon emissions. Elastic Universal Profiling is addressing this gap by estimating the CO₂ emission associated with every line of code in your entire infrastructure, enabling SREs and developers to engineer greener and more cost-effective software. 

We built Universal Profiling with three personas in mind: SREs, developers and FinOps professionals.

For SREs, Elastic Universal Profiling provides system-wide performance insights that span across the kernel, run-times, and third-party library codes. With unprecedented breadth and depth of visibility, it unlocks insight into the unknown-unknowns that may be lurking in your system –– allowing for precise and rapid troubleshooting. This deeper level of system-wide visibility empowers SREs to answer essential "why" and "what" questions:

• Why are we spending x% of our CPU budget on function y?
• Why are we experiencing unexpected CPU spikes during off-peak hours? 
• What are the resource consumption patterns across different workloads, and how can they be optimized for cost and carbon-emission efficiency?
• What is the most expensive line of code across our entire multi-cloud fleet?

All of this visibility is available to you, the SRE, without relying on developers to instrument or change the code, and with zero recompilations or restarts. Universal Profiling puts the power to diagnose and resolve issues with precision and speed firmly in your hands. Just deploy the agent and receive profiling data (in Kibana^®) a few minutes later. Get started now. 

[Related article on how profiling complements APM: Why metrics, logs, and traces aren’t enough]

Universal Profiling supports PHP, Python, Java (or any JVM language), Go, Rust, C/C++, Zig, Node.js/V8, Ruby, and Perl.

Elastic Universal Profiling equips FinOps professionals with the insights needed to manage costs strategically, aligning financial decisions with both performance demands and sustainability goals, allowing them to answer critical questions such as: 

• How can we reduce cloud costs without compromising on performance? 
• What are the trends in resource utilization, and how can they be aligned with our sustainability targets? 
• Where are the opportunities for driving efficiencies that have both economic and environmental benefits?

To sum it up, just as car manufacturers monitor the cost of every component on their assembly line, Elastic Universal Profiling offers deeper insight into the unit economics of your software assembly line.

Discover how each line of code, including those you don't own, influences your cost of goods sold (COGS) with Elastic Universal Profiling.