[throwaw12]

> There have been database and system tools to detect zombie services and underperforming queries since time immemorial.

as you mentioned "there have been......tools", there is always a tool best suited for a specific job, but it doesn't mean you need all the capabilities of that tool all the time. Too many tools lead to huge fragmentation inside the organisation to support multitude of tools

So why not have something one layer below your stack (kernel level) which can do good enough job to monitor almost everything you have. Its not only about if eBPF is cool, it is just reducing the fragmentation by going level below and extracting more info with a single suite of tools.