Instana Quick Start Guide

This guide helps you get started with Instana's Application Performance Monitoring (APM) platform quickly.

Welcome to Instana! This comprehensive quick start guide will walk you through the essential steps to begin monitoring your applications and infrastructure.

What is Instana?

Instana is an enterprise observability and automated application performance management (APM) solution that provides:

  • Automatic discovery of your application infrastructure
  • Real-time monitoring with 1-second granularity
  • Distributed tracing across microservices
  • AI-powered root cause analysis
  • Full-stack visibility from infrastructure to application code

For more information, see Application Monitoring and Infrastructure Monitoring.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

  • Access to your Instana tenant URL (for example, https://your-tenant.instana.io)
  • Your Instana agent key (provided by your admin)
  • Appropriate permissions to install agents on your infrastructure

Step 1: Access Instana Dashboard

  1. Navigate to your Instana tenant URL
  2. Log in with your credentials
  3. Familiarize yourself with the main navigation:
    • Infrastructure - View all monitored hosts and containers
    • Applications - Monitor application services and endpoints
    • Websites - Track end-user experience
    • Events - View incidents and changes
    • Analytics - Create custom dashboards and queries

Step 2: Install the Instana Agent

The Instana agent automatically discovers and monitors your applications. Choose your installation method based on your infrastructure.

For Linux/Unix Hosts

curl -o setup_agent.sh https://setup.instana.io/agent && chmod 700 ./setup_agent.sh && sudo ./setup_agent.sh -a <agent_key> -t dynamic -e <backend_url>

For Kubernetes

kubectl create namespace instana-agent
kubectl create secret generic instana-agent-secret \
  --from-literal=key=<agent_key> \
  --namespace=instana-agent

helm repo add instana https://agents.instana.io/helm
helm install instana-agent instana/instana-agent \
  --namespace instana-agent \
  --set agent.key=<agent_key> \
  --set agent.endpointHost=<backend_url>

For Docker

docker run -d --name instana-agent \
  --privileged --net=host --pid=host \
  -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
  -v /dev:/dev -v /sys:/sys -v /var/log:/var/log \
  -e INSTANA_AGENT_KEY=<agent_key> \
  -e INSTANA_AGENT_ENDPOINT=<backend_url> \
  icr.io/instana/agent
Note:
Replace <agent_key> and <backend_url> with your actual values.

Step 3: Verify Agent Installation

  1. Go to Infrastructure → Agents in the Instana UI
  2. Wait 1-2 minutes for your agent to appear
  3. Verify the agent status shows as "Healthy" (green)
  4. Check that discovered technologies are listed

Step 4: Explore Your Infrastructure

For more information, see Infrastructure Monitoring.

  1. Navigate to Infrastructure → Map
  2. View the automatic discovery of:
    • Hosts and containers
    • Applications and services
    • Databases and message queues
    • Network connections
  3. Click on any component to see detailed metrics

Step 5: Monitor Your Applications

For more information, see Application Monitoring.

View Application Services

  1. Go to Applications → Services
  2. See all automatically discovered services
  3. Click on a service to view:
    • Request rate and latency
    • Error rates
    • Dependencies
    • Endpoints

Analyze Traces

  1. Navigate to Applications → Calls
  2. View distributed traces across your microservices
  3. Click on any trace to see:
    • Complete request flow
    • Timing breakdown
    • Errors and exceptions
    • Database queries

Step 6: Set Up Alerts

For more information, see Alerting.

Create a Smart Alert

  1. Go to Events → Alerts
  2. Click + New Alert
  3. Choose alert type:
    • Built-in Events - Pre-configured alerts for common issues
    • Threshold - Alert on metric thresholds
    • Smart Alerts - AI-powered anomaly detection
  4. Configure scope (which services/infrastructure)
  5. Set notification channels (email, Slack, PagerDuty, etc.)
  6. Save and activate

Example: High Error Rate Alert

  • Alert Type: Threshold
  • Metric: Error Rate
  • Condition: > 5%
  • Duration: 5 minutes
  • Scope: All services in production

Step 7: Create Your First Dashboard

For more information, see Building Custom Dashboards.

  1. Navigate to Analytics → Dashboards
  2. Click + Create Dashboard
  3. Add widgets:
    • Metrics - Time series charts
    • Service List - Table of services
    • Infrastructure Map - Visual topology
    • Log Messages - Recent logs
  4. Customize time range and filters
  5. Save and share with your team

Step 8: Investigate Issues

For more information, see Root Cause Analysis.

When an Incident Occurs

  1. Go to Events → Incidents
  2. Click on the incident to see:
    • Root Cause - AI-identified source of the problem
    • Impact - Affected services and users
    • Timeline - Sequence of events
    • Related Changes - Recent deployments or config changes
  3. Click Analyze to dive deeper
  4. Use Unbounded Analytics to query raw data

Troubleshooting Workflow

Follow this workflow when investigating incidents:

  1. Incident Alert
  2. View Root Cause
  3. Check Traces
  4. Analyze Logs
  5. Review Changes
  6. Identify Fix
  7. Resolve

Key Features to Explore

After completing the initial setup, explore these advanced features:

Unbounded Analytics

  • Query any metric or trace data
  • No sampling, full data retention
  • Custom visualizations
  • Path: Analytics → Unbounded Analytics

Website Monitoring

  • Real user monitoring (RUM)
  • Track page load times
  • Monitor JavaScript errors
  • Path: Websites

Log Management

  • Centralized log collection
  • Correlation with traces
  • Smart log alerts
  • Path: Analytics → Logs

For more information, see Logging.

Common Tasks Cheat Sheet

Task Navigation Path
View all services Applications → Services
See infrastructure map Infrastructure → Map
Check agent health Infrastructure → Agents
View recent incidents Events → Incidents
Create dashboard Analytics → Dashboards
Query metrics Analytics → Unbounded Analytics
Configure alerts Events → Alerts
View traces Applications → Calls
Check logs Analytics → Logs
Set up SLOs Applications → SLOs

Best Practices

  1. Tag Your Services
    • Use consistent naming conventions
    • Add environment tags (prod, staging, dev)
    • Tag by team ownership
  2. Set Up Meaningful Alerts
    • Start with built-in events
    • Avoid alert fatigue - be selective
    • Use Smart Alerts for anomaly detection
  3. Create Team Dashboards
    • One dashboard per service/team
    • Include key metrics: latency, errors, throughput
    • Add SLO widgets
  4. Regular Reviews
    • Weekly: Review incidents and trends
    • Monthly: Optimize alert thresholds
    • Quarterly: Review SLO compliance

Next Steps

Now that you are set up, consider:

  1. Instrument Custom Code
    • Add manual spans for business logic
    • Track custom metrics
    • Integrate with OpenTelemetry
  2. Integrate with CI/CD
    • Track deployments as change events
    • Monitor release impact
    • Set up quality gates
  3. Expand Monitoring
    • Add more environments
    • Enable website monitoring
    • Configure synthetic monitoring
  4. Optimize Alerts
    • Fine-tune thresholds based on baselines
    • Set up escalation policies
    • Integrate with incident management tools

Quick Reference: Key Concepts

  • Agent: Software that collects monitoring data from your infrastructure
  • Sensor: Component that monitors specific technologies (Java, Node.js, etc.)
  • Service: A logical grouping of endpoints (for example, user-service, payment-api)
  • Call: A single request through your distributed system
  • Trace: Complete path of a request across all services
  • Span: Individual operation within a trace
  • Incident: Detected issue requiring attention
  • Event: Any change or occurrence in your system

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Agent Not Appearing

  • Check network connectivity to backend
  • Verify agent key is correct
  • Review agent logs: /opt/instana/agent/data/log/agent.log

No Data for Application

  • Ensure application is running
  • Check if technology is supported
  • Verify agent has necessary permissions

Missing Traces

  • Check if tracing is enabled for the service
  • Verify network connectivity between services
  • Review trace sampling configuration

Getting Help

Support Channels

  • In-App Chat: Click the help icon in Instana UI
  • Support Portal: Contact your admin for access
  • Community: Instana community forums

Learning Resources

  • Instana University: Free training courses
  • Webinars: Regular product updates
  • Blog: Best practices and use cases