SUPPORT_MATRIX.md

OBI Support Matrix

This document defines the environments and artifact platforms that OBI documents as supported.

While OBI remains in Development, this matrix is informational and does not yet create a stable v1 compatibility contract. After OBI declares v1, the entries documented here become part of the support matrix described in VERSIONING.md.

Release Artifacts

OBI publishes the following release artifacts for supported runtime platforms:

Artifact	Supported platforms
obi binary archive	Linux amd64, Linux arm64
k8s-cache binary archive	Linux amd64, Linux arm64
otel/ebpf-instrument container image	Linux amd64, Linux arm64
otel/ebpf-instrument-k8s-cache container image	Linux amd64, Linux arm64

Other operating systems and architectures may compile selected packages or stub implementations, but are not part of the supported runtime matrix for OBI.

Runtime Requirements

OBI supports Linux environments that meet all of the following requirements:

Requirement	Supported
Kernel	Linux 5.8+
RHEL-based kernel exception	Linux 4.18+ for RHEL-based distributions with required eBPF backports
BTF	Kernel must expose BTF information
CPU architecture	amd64, arm64
Privileges	Root, or the Linux capabilities required by the enabled OBI features

RHEL-based distributions in scope for the 4.18+ exception include RHEL 8, CentOS 8, Rocky Linux 8, AlmaLinux 8, and compatible derivatives that provide the required eBPF backports and BTF support.

Validation Coverage

The support contract is broader than CI coverage, but the following environments are explicitly validated in repository automation today:

Area	Validation currently present in repo
Release artifacts	Linux amd64 and Linux arm64 archives and container images
Cross-compilation	Full OBI support path compiled for Linux amd64 and Linux arm64
BPF verifier coverage (x86_64)	Kernel 5.15.152 (x86_64) and kernel 6.10.6 (x86_64)
BPF verifier coverage (arm64)	arm64 runner coverage
VM integration tests	Kernel 5.15.152 (x86_64) and kernel 6.10.6 (x86_64)

This document should only claim support beyond these validation points when there is an explicit maintainer decision to do so.

Protocol Instrumentation

OBI currently documents the following protocol-level instrumentation support:

This section describes language-agnostic protocol instrumentation. Some context propagation support is only available through language-specific library instrumentation documented later in this file.

Protocol	Versions	Methods or operations	Secure	Context propagation	Limitations
HTTP	1.0/1.1	All	Yes	Yes	None documented
HTTP	2.0	All	Yes	No	Context propagation for HTTP/2 is only through Go library instrumentation
gRPC	1.0+	All	Yes	No	Long-lived connections started before OBI may use * for method names
MySQL	All	All	Yes	No	Prepared statements created before OBI started may miss query text
PostgreSQL	All	All	Yes	No	Prepared statements created before OBI started may miss query text
Redis	All	All	Yes	No	Existing connections may miss database number and db.namespace
MongoDB	5.0+	insert, update, find, delete, findAndModify, aggregate, count, distinct, mapReduce	Yes	No	No support for compressed payloads
Couchbase	All	All	Yes	No	Bucket or collection may be unknown if negotiation happened before OBI started
Memcached	All	ASCII text subset excluding quit and meta commands	Yes	No	Only the first key is recorded for multi-key retrieval; payload bytes are not captured
Kafka	All	produce, fetch	Yes	No	Topic name lookup may fail for newer fetch API versions (>= 13)
MQTT	3.1.1/5.0	publish, subscribe	No	No	Only the first topic filter is used for subscribe; payload not captured
GraphQL	All	All	Yes	No	None documented
Elasticsearch	7.14+	/_search, /_msearch, /_bulk, /_doc	Yes	No	None documented
Opensearch	3.0.0+	/_search, /_msearch, /_bulk, /_doc	Yes	No	None documented
AWS S3	All	CreateBucket, DeleteBucket, PutObject, DeleteObject, ListBuckets, ListObjects, GetObject	Yes	No	None documented
AWS SQS	All	All	Yes	No	None documented
SQL++	All	All	Yes	No	None documented
GenAI	All	All	Yes	No	Supported vendors are OpenAI and Anthropic

Runtime, Server, And Library Instrumentation

OBI supports two different compatibility categories for application observability:

• Network-level protocol instrumentation, which is language-agnostic.
• Runtime, server, library, and statistical instrumentation for selected environments and features.

Runtime And Server Baselines

The following runtime and server baselines are currently documented or enforced in the repository:

Runtime or server	Baseline
Go applications	Go 1.17+ for library-level instrumentation
Java applications	JDK 8+
Node.js async-hooks context propagation	Node.js 8.0+
Python asyncio context propagation	Python 3.9+ with uvloop
Ruby applications	Ruby 3.0.2+ when served by Puma 5.0+
nginx	HTTP server and reverse-proxy tracing validated on nginx 1.27.5 and 1.29.7

Additional language families may be instrumented through network-level tracing, but are not listed here unless the repository documents a concrete runtime or library compatibility baseline.

Go Library Instrumentation

OBI currently documents the following Go library compatibility baselines:

Library	Baseline
net/http	>= 1.17
golang.org/x/net/http2	>= 0.12.0
github.com/gorilla/mux	>= v1.5.0
github.com/gin-gonic/gin	>= v1.6.0, != v1.7.5
google.golang.org/grpc	>= 1.40
net/rpc/jsonrpc	>= 1.17
database/sql	>= 1.17
github.com/go-sql-driver/mysql	>= v1.5.0
github.com/lib/pq	all versions
github.com/redis/go-redis/v9	>= v9.0.0
github.com/segmentio/kafka-go	>= v0.4.11
github.com/IBM/sarama	>= 1.37
go.mongodb.org/mongo-driver	v1: >= v1.10.1; v2: >= v2.0.1

Statistical Metrics

OBI currently documents the following statistical instrumentation support:

Metric	Scope	Notes
TCP RTT	Node-wide statistical metric collection	Calculated from the kernel TCP srtt_us field

Context Propagation Frameworks

OBI currently documents the following asynchronous or runtime-specific context propagation support:

Framework	Runtime	Baseline	Limitations	Status
Go goroutines	Go	Go 1.18+	Up to 3 nested levels of goroutines	Stable
Node.js async hooks	Node.js	Node.js 8.0+	Custom handling of SIGUSR1 might interfere	Stable
Ruby Puma server	Ruby	Ruby applications served by Puma	Only works with Puma server	Stable
Java thread pool	Java	JDK 8+	None documented	Stable
Python asyncio	Python	Python 3.9+ with uvloop	Only works with the uvloop event loop	Stable

GPU Instrumentation

OBI currently documents the following GPU execution instrumentation support:

Library	Baseline	Instrumented primitives	Limitations
libcuda	>= 7.0	cudaLaunchKernel, cudaGraphLaunch, cudaMalloc, cudaMemcpy, cudaMemcpyAsync	None documented

Explicitly Out Of Scope

The following environments are outside the documented OBI support matrix:

• Non-Linux operating systems
• Linux architectures other than amd64 and arm64
• Linux environments without BTF support
• Kernel versions earlier than Linux 5.8, except for the documented RHEL-based 4.18+ exception
• Any distro- or runtime-specific compatibility claim that is not explicitly documented in this file