Talk for SCaLE13x. Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ik8oiQvWgo . Profiling can show what your Linux kernel and appliacations are doing in detail, across all software stack layers. This talk shows how we are using Linux perf_events (aka "perf") and flame graphs at Netflix to understand CPU usage in detail, to optimize our cloud usage, solve performance issues, and identify regressions. This will be more than just an intro : profiling difficult targets, including Java and Node.js, will be covered, which includes ways to resolve JITed symbols and broken stacks. Included are the easy examples, the hard, and the cutting edge.