Bio
I hate writing bios. From time to time, conference organizers, journalists, and publishers ask me for a bio of a certain length ("50-75 words, "around 100 words", etc.), and so I'll cache my most recent ones here. This page also has my interviews and upcoming talks.
Very Short
Industry expert in computing performance and eBPF. Solves hard problems. Makes things faster.
Short (<75 words)
Brendan Gregg is an internationally renowned expert in computing performance. He is a senior performance engineer at Netflix, where he does performance design, evaluation, analysis, and tuning. He authored Systems Performance and BPF Performance Tools (Addison-Wesley), and received the USENIX LISA Outstanding Achievement award. He has delivered industry-leading performance for a variety of products, and has created widely used performance tools, methodologies, and visualizations, including flame graphs. His work is the basis for multiple startups.
Medium (around 100 words)
Brendan Gregg is an internationally renowned expert in computing performance. He is a senior performance engineer at Netflix, where he does performance design, evaluation, analysis, and tuning. He authored Systems Performance and BPF Performance Tools in the Addison-Wesley professional computing series, and received the USENIX LISA Outstanding Achievement award. Previously among the top performance experts at Sun Microsystems, he has delivered industry-leading performance for a variety of products. He has also created widely used performance tools, methodologies, and visualizations, including flame graphs, and pioneered eBPF as an observability technology. His work has saved the industry over US$1B, and has been the basis for multiple startups.
Long
Brendan Gregg is an internationally renowned expert in computing performance. He is a senior performance engineer at Netflix, where he does large-scale computer performance design, evaluation, analysis, and tuning. Previously among the top performance experts at Sun Microsystems, he has delivered industry-leading performance for a variety of commercial products and enterprise environments. He has also created widely used tools, methodologies, and visualizations for performance analysis, including flame graphs. His tools are included in multiple operating systems and products, and are in use by companies worldwide. He pioneered eBPF as an observability technology, and leads the industry in its usage. His work has saved the industry over US$1B through performance improvements, and has been the basis for multiple startups.
He has authored hundreds of articles about systems performance and multiple technical books, including Systems Performance 2nd Edition (2021) and BPF Performance Tools (2019), both in the Addison-Wesley professional computing series. His prior books were on Solaris performance and DTrace, and were published by Prentice Hall. His books are recommended or required reading at major technology companies. He has also been an invited keynote speaker at technical conferences worldwide, and received the USENIX LISA Outstanding Achievement award.
He provides performance expertise for multiple company functions, including directing other teams, evaluating new technologies, and making individual contributions. He has extensive performance tuning experience for enterprise and small- to large-scale cloud computing environments, and root cause analysis of complex problems across the software stack and down to metal. He has worked with sales organizations to win and retain customers during proof of concepts and product support, including direct work with Fortune 500 companies, securing millions in company revenue. He represented Sun Microsystems and Netflix worldwide as a performance expert.
His creations include flame graphs and latency heat maps, the USE methodology, and advanced eBPF tracing tools to provide unique insights into system behavior. His prior work includes leading performance efforts for the world's first container-based cloud, and for the first ZFS storage appliance, in both cases delivering industry-leading performance. As a kernel engineer, he developed the ZFS L2ARC: A pioneering file system performance technology. He has also developed and delivered professional training courses on computer performance.
Way too long make it stop
Interviews
- YOW! 2018 (video) by Dave Thomas, about performance analysis and current challenges (2018).
- Kernel Recipes (video) about working on Linux (2017).
- GeekSpeak (podcast) by Lyle Troxell, about working at Netflix (2017).
- BookFlocks about technical books (PDF) (2014).
- The Setup on usesthis.com, about what software and hardware I use (PDF) (2014).
- BSD Now 65 (video) by Allan Jude and Kris Moore, about Netflix and BSD (2014).
- USENIX, by Rikki Endsley, after winning the LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement (PDF) (2013).
Talks
Upcoming talks:
- YOW! online: Computer Performance 2021: What's on the Horizon (Nov 30-Dec 1, 2021):
Conferences I will or have spoken at. Mouse-over for names (tooltip), click for websites:
Prior conference talks include (see my homepage for slides and video):
- "Processor Benchmarking" (guest appearance), Brendan Gregg, IntelON, online 2021
- "Performance Wins with BPF: Getting Started" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, eBPF Summit, online 2021
- "Performance Wins with BPF: Getting Started", Brendan Gregg, Facebook @Scale, online 2021
- "Computer Performance: On the Horizon" (plenary), Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, online 2021
- "BPF Internals", Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, online 2021
- "Performance Wins with BPF: Getting Started" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, eBPF Summit, online 2020
- "Linux Systems Performance" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, YOW! Auckland, Perth, Singapore, Hong Kong, online 2020
- "Brendan/Netflix Updates", Brendan Gregg, LSFMMBPF, online 2020
- "BPF Performance Analysis at Netflix", Brendan Gregg, AWS re:Invent, Las Vegas 2019
- "Linux Systems Performance", Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, Portland 2019
- "Extended BPF: A New Type of Software" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, UbuntuMasters, Santa Clara 2019
- "BPF Observability" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, LSFMM, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2019
- "eBPF Performance Tools 2019", Brendan Gregg, SCaLE17x, Los Angeles 2019
- "Cloud Performance Root Cause Analysis at Netflix" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, YOW! Conference, Sydney & Brisbane & Melbourne, Australia 2018
- "Working at Netflix" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, YOW! CTO Summit, Sydney & Melbourne, Australia 2018
- "Linux Performance 2018", Brendan Gregg, All Things Open, Raleigh 2018
- "BPF Observability", Brendan Gregg, NetConf, Boston 2018
- "Linux Performance 2018" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, PerconaLive, Santa Clara 2018
- "CPU Utilization is WRONG" (lightning talk), Brendan Gregg, SCALE16x, Los Angeles 2018
- "How Netflix Tunes EC2 Instances for Performance", Brendan Gregg, AWS re:Invent, Las Vegas 2017
- "Linux Container Performance Analysis", Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, San Francisco 2017
- "Using Linux perf at Netflix", Brendan Gregg, Kernel Recipes, Paris 2017
- "Performance Analysis Superpowers with Linux BPF", Brendan Gregg, Kernel Recipes, Paris 2017
- "System Performance Analysis Methodologies" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, EuroBSDcon, Paris 2017
- "Performance Analysis Superpowers with Linux BPF", Brendan Gregg, Open Source Summit, Los Angeles 2017
- "Performance Superpowers with Enhanced BPF", Brendan Gregg, USENIX ATC, Santa Clara 2017
- "Visualizing Performance with Flame Graphs", Brendan Gregg, USENIX ATC, Santa Clara 2017
- "Performance Analysis Superpowers with Linux eBPF", Brendan Gregg, O'Reilly Velocity, San Jose 2017
- "Container Performance Analysis", Brendan Gregg, DockerCon, Austin 2017
- "Linux 4.x Tracing: Performance Analysis with bcc/BPF", Brendan Gregg, SCaLE15x, Los Angeles 2017
- "BPF Tools", Brendan Gregg, IO Visor Summit, Mountain View 2017
- "Linux Monitoring at Scale with eBPF", Alex Maestretti, Brendan Gregg, BsidesSF, San Francisco 2017
- "BPF: Tracing and More", Brendan Gregg, linux.conf.au, Hobart, Australia 2017
- "Linux 4.x Tracing Tools: Using BPF Superpowers", Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, Boston 2016
- "Designing Tracing Tools", Brendan Gregg, Sysdig CCWFS, San Francisco 2016
- "Java Performance Analysis on Linux with Flame Graphs", Brendan Gregg, JavaOne, San Francisco 2016
- "System Methodology - Holistic Performance Analysis on Modern Systems" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, ACM Applicative, New York 2016
- "Linux Systems Performance", Brendan Gregg, PerconaLive, Santa Clara 2016
- "Performance Checklists for SREs" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, USENIX SREcon, Santa Clara 2016
- "Linux 4.x Performance: Using BPF Superpowers", Brendan Gregg, Performance@Scale, Menlo Park 2016
- "Broken Linux Performance Tools", Brendan Gregg, SCaLE14x, Los Angeles 2016
- "Broken Performance Tools", Brendan Gregg, QCon, San Francisco 2015
- "Java Mixed-Mode Flame Graphs", Brendan Gregg, JavaOne, San Francisco 2015
- "Netflix Instance Performance Analysis Requirements", Brendan Gregg, Monitorama, Portland 2015
- "Linux Profiling at Netflix", Brendan Gregg, SCaLE13), Los Angeles 2015
- "Linux Performance Analysis: New Tools and Old Secrets", USENIX LISA, Seattle 2014
- "Performance Tuning EC2 Instances", Brendan Gregg, AWS re:Invent, Las Vegas 2014
- "FreeBSD Flame Graphs", Brendan Gregg, FreeBSD Developer and Vendor Summit, San Jose 2014
- "Performance Analysis", Brendan Gregg, MeetBSD California, San Jose 2014
- "Linux Performance Tools", Brendan Gregg, LinuxCon | CloudOpen Europe, Düsseldorf 2014
- "From DTrace to Linux", Brendan Gregg, Tracing Summit, Düsseldorf 2014
- "From Clouds to Roots", Brendan Gregg, SurgeCon, Baltimore 2014
- "Linux Performance Tools", Brendan Gregg, LinuxCon | CloudOpen North America, Chicago 2014
- "Analyzing OS X Systems Performance with the USE Method", Brendan Gregg, MacIT, San Francisco 2014
- "What Linux can learn from Solaris performance and vice-versa" (keynote), Brendan Gregg, SCaLE12x, Los Angeles 2014
- "Blazing Performance with Flame Graphs" (plenary), Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, Washington DC, 2013
- "Open Source Systems Performance", Brendan Gregg, O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), Portland 2013
- "Stop the Guessing: Performance Methodologies for Production Systems", Brendan Gregg, Velocity, Santa Clara 2013
- "Linux Performance Analysis and Tools", Brendan Gregg, Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE11x), Los Angeles 2013
- "Performance Analysis Methodology", Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, San Diego 2012
- "ZFS Performance Analysis and Tools", Brendan Gregg, zfsday, San Francisco 2012
- "DTracing the Cloud", Brendan Gregg, illumosday, San Francisco 2012
- "The USE Method", Brendan Gregg, Fórum Internacional Software Livre 13 (FISL13), Porto Alegre 2012
- "Visualizations", Brendan Gregg, dtrace.conf, San Francisco 2012
- "Performance Analysis: new tools and concepts from the cloud", Brendan Gregg, SCaLE10x, Los Angeles 2012
- "Breaking Down Query Latency With DTrace", Brendan Gregg, Percona Live, New York 2011
- "Visualizations for Performance Analysis", Brendan Gregg, Large Installation System Admininistration (USENIX LISA), San Jose 2010
- "How To Build Better Applications With Oracle Solaris DTrace", Brendan Gregg, Jim Mauro, Oracle Open World (OOW), San Francisco 2010
- "DTrace Crash Course", Brendan Gregg, Kernel Conference Australia (KCA), Brisbane 2009
- "Kernel Engineering", Brendan Gregg, Kernel Conference Australia (KCA), Brisbane 2009
- "Network Providers", Brendan Gregg, dtrace.conf, San Francisco 2008
- "Fishworks", Brendan Gregg, Cindi McGuire, Sun Microsystems Customer Engineering Conference (CEC), Las Vegas 2008
- "Why Observability Matters: How DTrace Helped Twitter", Adam Leventhal, Brendan Gregg, OSCON, Portland 2007
- "DTrace TCP Provider", Brendan Gregg, Bryan Cantrill, Sun Microsystems Customer Engineering Conference (CEC), San Francisco 2006
Prior tutorials/workshops:
- "BPF Performance Tools", Brendan Gregg, USENIX LISA, Portland 2019
- "Linux Performance Analysis Using Perf and BPF", Brendan Gregg, Sasha Goldshtein, USENIX LISA, Boston 2016
- "Linux Performance Tools", Brendan Gregg, O'Reilly Velocity, Santa Clara 2015
- "Metrics Workshop", Brendan Gregg, Narayan Desai, Kent Skaar, Theo Schlossnagle, Caskey Dickson, USENIX LISA, Washington DC 2013
- Not listed here are instructor led professional training classes I've developed and delivered, which ranged from 3 to 10 days in length.