Akamai Cloud Longview vs Pixie

Akamai Cloud Longview graphs system data and tracks CPU, memory, and network bandwidth at both aggregate and per-process levels. Its real-time graphs can help surface performance problems, and Cloud Manager displays Overview, Processes, Network, and Disks metrics. Optional tabs cover Apache, NGINX, and MySQL when the software and Longview Agent are configured. Getting started requires creating a client and installing its open-source agent on a Linux server; the agent can also be installed on Linux systems hosted outside Akamai Cloud. CentOS, Debian, and Ubuntu are officially supported, and Akamai says most Linux systems are compatible. Longview is available on Linodes in core compute regions, not distributed compute regions. The Free plan costs nothing for up to 10 clients, with five-minute data resolution and 12 hours of history. Free and Pro clients cannot be used simultaneously. Longview does not collect swap disk data, and graphs show only data captured after agent installation.

Pixie is open-source Kubernetes observability and debugging software for developers. It collects metrics, events, traces, and logs without code changes, using dynamic eBPF probes and ingestors. Users can run community, team, or custom scripts to debug as code and share sessions. Its CLI provides health checks and charts, with a browser interface available when needed. Pixie supports hosted and self-hosted deployments; its Vizier data-collection component runs in the Kubernetes cluster. Requirements include Kubernetes v1.21 or later and Linux nodes, and pods that install BPF programs need privileged access to the Linux kernel. The project lists Cosmic Cloud and New Relic Cloud as free hosted versions. Pixie lists Minikube, EKS, GKE, AKS, and self-managed Kubernetes environments. Telemetry traffic is encrypted in transit. The requirements page says telemetry passes through Pixie Cloud without persistence, while the install guide says hosted-backend telemetry data is stored exclusively on the Kubernetes cluster, not in Pixie Cloud. Listed unsupported environments include EKS Fargate, GKE Autopilot, Docker Desktop, k3d, kind, and Windows. Help options include Community Slack, a troubleshooting guide, and GitHub issues.