How to Use Pyroscope for Continuous Profiling of Kubernetes Microservices

What is Pyroscope?

Pyroscope is an open‑source continuous profiling platform that collects, stores, and queries profiling data with minimal CPU and memory overhead. It uses a server‑agent model and supports language‑specific agents for Go, Python, Ruby, eBPF, Java, .NET, PHP, and Rust.

Why Choose Pyroscope?

Compared with other continuous profilers such as Parca, Datadog Continuous Profiler, and Google Cloud Profiler, Pyroscope focuses on an efficient storage engine (Badger DB) and provides human‑readable profiles by supporting both language‑specific agents and eBPF.

Installation Steps

Start a local Kubernetes cluster with Minikube and add the Pyroscope Helm chart repository:

minikube start

helm repo add pyroscope-io https://pyroscope-io.github.io/helm-chart

helm install pyroscope pyroscope-io/pyroscope --set service.type=NodePort

helm list

kubectl get all

Verify the service URL with: minikube service pyroscope The UI is accessible at the displayed address (e.g., http://192.168.49.2:30639).

Integrating Pyroscope with the Google Microservices Demo

Modify each service’s Dockerfile to copy the Pyroscope binary and launch the application through it.

Python Email Service

COPY --from=pyroscope/pyroscope:latest /usr/bin/pyroscope /usr/bin/pyroscope
CMD ["pyroscope", "exec", "python", "email_server.py"]

Build and push the image:

docker build . -t beellzrocks/emailservice:latest
docker push beellzrocks/emailservice:latest

.NET Cart Service

COPY --from=pyroscope/pyroscope:latest /usr/bin/pyroscope /usr/bin/pyroscope
ENTRYPOINT ["pyroscope", "exec", "-spy-name", "dotnetspy", "/app/cartservice"]

Build and push the image similarly.

Go Product Catalog Service

import (
    "github.com/pyroscope-io/pyroscope/pkg/agent/profiler"
)

func main() {
    pyroscope.Start(pyroscope.Config{
        ApplicationName: os.Getenv("APPLICATION_NAME"),
        ServerAddress:   os.Getenv("SERVER_ADDRESS"),
    })
    // application code
}

Build and push the image after editing.

Updating Kubernetes Manifests

Replace the original container images with the newly built ones and add the required environment variables and capabilities:

containers:
  - name: server
    image: beellzrocks/emailservice
    env:
      - name: PYROSCOPE_SERVER_ADDRESS
        value: "http://pyroscope:4040"
      - name: PYROSCOPE_APPLICATION_NAME
        value: "email.service"
    securityContext:
      capabilities:
        add:
          - SYS_PTRACE

Apply the manifests:

kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/infracloudio/microservices-demo-dev/master/release/kubernetes-manifests.yaml

Resource Utilization

Pyroscope consumes very little CPU while storing data locally in Badger DB, making it suitable for production environments.

Monitoring with Pyroscope

After deployment, Pyroscope generates flame‑graph visualizations for each language, helping developers pinpoint hot paths and inefficient code.

Conclusion

Continuous profiling is essential for meeting user performance expectations. Pyroscope provides low‑overhead, language‑aware profiling that helps developers diagnose issues early, improve application speed, and reduce cloud infrastructure costs.