Using Concert Workflows to import resilience data from Instana

You can download a prebuilt workflow from the IBM Automation Library designed to facilitate resilience data collection in Instana and sending it to your Concert instance to assess against the defined non-functional requirements (NFRs) for a given application or environment.

Once configured, you can ingest the following resilience metrics from Instana:
  • num_throughput_transactions

    This metric represents the number of incoming requests to the application in one day. It is calculated by comparing multiple daily request counts and using the highest value.

  • pct_availability_by_error_rate

    This metric represents the aggregated application available based on the number of HTTP errors observed in one day. If there are none, the number of "available days" is increased by one.

  • pct_slo_latency_errorbudget

    This metric represents the aggregated application latency measurement for a single day. This value is compared to the latency_slo threshold to determine if the daily value meets the defined objective.

  • pct_slo_error_rate_errorbudget

    This metric represents the average rate of error responses for a given application.

Before you begin

  • You must establish a connection between you Concert and Instana instances, and then create an ingestion job to ingest Instana application data. Refer to Integrating with IBM Instana Observability for instructions.
  • You must enable the Resilience dimension from the global settings. Go to Administration > Settings, and click the Miscellaneous tab to enable this feature in your instance.

Step 1: Download the prebuilt workflow

Click the following link to preview and download the prebuilt workflow in the IBM Automation Library: https://automation-library.ibm.com/workflows/Get%20Instana%20metrics%20and%20send%20to%20Concert%20Resilience

Step 2: Import the workflow file to Concert

To import the workflow to your Concert instance, go to Workflows > Manage in the Concert UI, and then click Import.

Refer to Importing a workflow file for more details.

Step 3: Edit the imported workflow

After importing the workflow, you must provide the parameter values and authentications required to execute it.

  1. Navigate to Workflows > Manage if you are not already there.
  2. Click the overflow menu next to the workflow you just imported, and select Open to open the workflow editor.
    Tip: Open the overflow menu by clicking the icon in the Actions column next to the workflow you want to edit.

    The User variables section is populated with the parameters referenced throughout the workflow. Certain values, such as authentication details.

  3. Enter the following parameter values listed in the User variables section of the workflow editor:
    • auth - Enter the authentication details for your Instana instance.
    • concert_api_token - Enter a valid API key generated in the Concert UI.
    • concert_host - Enter the hostname or IP address of your Concert instance.
    • concert_port - If necessary, change the default port from 12443 to the port used to handle incoming data to your Concert instance.
    • profile - Specify the resilience profile to apply in the posture assessment for the ingested data.
    • name - Edit the name of the workflow.
    • assessment_period - Indicate the amount of time to cover in each resilience assessment. The default is hourly, but you can change this to day, week, month, quarter, or latest.
  4. Click Save.

Step 4: Create and schedule a Concert Workflows job

To configure recurring data ingestion, create a Concert Workflows job to automatically initiate resilience data ingestion from Instana at a defined interval.

Refer to Scheduling a Concert Workflows job for instructions.