Perforator – cluster-wide profiling tool for large data centers
Hey HN! We are happy to share Perforator – our internal cluster-wide profiler with great support for native languages and a built-in AutoFDO pipeline to simplify sPGO builds. Perforator allows you to profile most binaries without having to recompile or adjust the build process. We use it at Yandex to profile each pod inside a large cluster at modest speed (99Hz), collecting petabytes of profiles every day. There's a blog post about it at https://medium.com/yandex/yandexs-high-performance-profiler-.... Inspired by Google-Wide Profiling, we started continuous profiling…
Perforator – cluster-wide profiling tool for large data centers launched on February 1, 2025 with 78 votes, #423 of 5,999 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
Perforator is a cluster-wide profiling tool developed by Yandex for large data centers that profiles native language binaries without requiring recompilation or build changes. It operates at modest overhead (99Hz sampling) across production clusters, collecting performance data at scale using eBPF technology. The tool includes an AutoFDO pipeline for simplified profile-guided optimization builds and generates flamegraphs for detailed visibility into production binary behavior. It is designed for organizations running large containerized systems that need continuous performance profiling.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Perforator is a cluster-wide continuous profiling tool designed for large data centers - yandex/perforator
Perforator is a production-ready, open-source Continuous Profiling app that can collect CPU profiles from your production without affecting its performance, made by Yandex and inspired by Google-Wide Profiling . Perforator is deployed on tens of thousands of servers in Yandex and already has helped many developers to fix performance issues in their services. Perforator runs on x86 64-bit Linux platforms consuming 512Mb of RAM (more on very large hosts with many CPUs) and <1% of host CPUs. You can profile your laptop using local perforator record CLI command . You can also deploy Perforator on playground/production Kubernetes cluster using our Helm chart . If you want to use prebuilt…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN! We are happy to share Perforator – our internal cluster-wide profiler with great support for native languages and a built-in AutoFDO pipeline to simplify sPGO builds. Perforator allows you to profile most binaries without having to recompile or adjust the build process. We use it at Yandex to profile each pod…
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