Planned updates to the agent

The agent bootstrap component does not update itself regardless of the deployment method, and you need to manually update it by reinstalling the agent. Without periodic manual updates, the agent might cause issues in your deployments.

You can use the following information to learn more about the planned breaking changes to the agent bootstrap and plan your manual updates accordingly to avoid risks.

27 February 2025

Service mesh bypass deprecation

The service mesh bypass configuration option is deprecated effective from March 2025. This feature is planned to be removed from the future releases of the Instana agent. The bypass option is replaced by Instana's native service mesh support for Istio and OpenShift ServiceMesh. For more information on native service mesh support, see Supported service meshes.

23 January 2025

Removal of static YAML method in Kubernetes agent deployment

Agent deployment on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift by using static YAML files is not recommended because these files are no longer maintained. You are suggested to use other supported deployment methods such as the Instana operator or Helm chart.

13 September 2024

Operator installation with Helm chart deployment

In the upcoming releases, the Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift Instana agent operator is installed along with the Helm chart deployment silently. When you run the Helm install command, the command deploys a CRD and a custom resource YAML file, which picks up configuration from the Helm configuration. This transition aims to streamline the agent deployment into a single process, helping to ensure a more integrated and customizable deployment workflow. This change also provides improved automation, configuration capability, and overall deployment consistency.

Removal of leader-elector

After the transition, you cannot use the old kubernetes-sensor. Instead, you must use its new version, k8s-sensor. Therefore, leader-elector is also not available.

The leader-elector images is planned to be removed completely from the registry in the upcoming releases.

21 August 2024

Agent Assembly switch to Java 11

Current versions of Instana agents support Java 8 and Java 11. However, in the upcoming releases, new Instana agents might stop the support for Java 8 and use only Java 11 to support a Karaf runtime update. This change is applied on the Agent Bootstrap level. Existing agents are not impacted by this change because the sensor code of these agents is compatible with Java 8. However, you are recommended to switch to Java 11 to avoid potential issues.

The transition to Java 11 might involve the following stages:

HotSpot-based agent transition to Java 11

In the first stage, Agent Assemblies that are released with a pre-packaged HotSpot JVM support Java 11 only. You must use Java 11 for these Agent Assemblies.

This change is implemented in September 2024.

Monitoring issue for new agents with Java 8

In the second stage, when you start new Agent Assemblies with a JVM that is based on Java 8, a monitoring issue appears. This monitoring issue alerts you about the upcoming requirement to switch to Java 11. You can find this monitoring issue in the agent dashboard and the Monitoring issues tab in the Events menu.

This change is implemented in January 2025.

Update to Karaf runtime

In the third stage, the Karaf runtime is updated. The Agent Assemblies that are released after this stage do not support Java 8. After this stage, you must use Java 11 only.