FAQ ¶

The Blackfire Stack is made of five main components:

• the Probe is a language extension that gathers the raw observability data;
• the Agent is a server-side daemon that receives raw observability data from the Probe, and forwards them to Blackfire server;
• the Browser Extension is a web browser extension used mainly to trigger profiling from a browser;
• the Client is the command line equivalent of the browser extension, it can be used from anywhere;
• the Website is used to visualize the profiles.

The following schema describes the general workflow of Blackfire and the communications established between each of its components.

What are the Limitations of using the Public Shared Agent? ¶

Using our public shared agent is a great way to get started faster when installing Blackfire on your local machine as you have one less package to install and configure.

Be aware of the following limitations:

• Profiles are sent on the wire without being sanitized;
• Profiles are not pruned and can result in big payload being submitted;
• It is not available for servers and paid plans.

At Blackfire, we take the security and confidentiality topic very seriously, to ensure the best experience possible while avoiding collecting unnecessary data, and provide safe authentication and hosting methods.

In a blink, here's what we do, and do not do:

• Confidentiality/Privacy when profiling:

  • We do not collect user session data;
  • We do not collect data from any database;
  • We do not collect any source code;
  • We do collect method/function/class names as caller/callee pairs, file names, and resources consumption metrics;
  • We anonymize SQL queries and HTTP calls (arguments, usernames, passwords, ...) before data is sent to our servers (except when explicitly told otherwise via the debug addon).

• Security

  • SSL Encryption transport layer;
  • Amazon data center;
  • Thorough Access Control;
  • Agent access secured by public/private key cryptographic mechanism;
  • Your profiles are private (except if you explicitly share them publicly);
  • All your data is erased when you request so.

You can have a clear vision of the data sent to our servers by using a proxy between the Blackfire Agent and the Blackfire Servers. We released a PHP script that can help you in doing so.

Blackfire has been audited by an expert third party and is fully GDPR compliant.

Blackfire is not collecting any end user data.

A Data Processing Addendum may be required to be signed between two parties, a Controller and a Processor. A Controller collects personal information from its users. A Processor can get some of that data from the Controller, and process it, as the value it provides to the Controller.

Blackfire is not a Processor of any data you collect from your users. There is therefore no need for you to have a Data Processing Addendum with Blackfire.

When configuring Blackfire to run performance test scenarios on your application, the Blackfire servers need access to your application's servers. If the profiled application is behind a firewall, let the Blackfire servers access the application by allowing IPs 46.51.168.2 and 54.75.240.245 in your configuration for the web ports (usually 80 and 443).

Suffixes like @1 are appended when functions or methods are invoked recursively - which means they call themselves. The number following the @ represents the level of nesting.

For regular usages, you should never hit 1,000 profiles per day per user.

For regular usages, you should never hit 350 builds per day per user.

Blackfire Continuous Profiler supports Go, Node.js, PHP, and Python.