System requirements of a multi-node deployment

View the system requirements of Self-Hosted Standard Edition on a multi-node cluster.

Required number of hosts

For multi-node environments, you need three hosts with the same operating system. For the host requirements and the supported operating systems, see Supported platforms and operating systems.

Hardware requirements

In multi-node clusters, only the production installation type is supported.

The three nodes in a multi-node cluster have specific uses:

  • The first node (instana-0), which is labeled as node-role.instana.io: "backend" during installation, is used for running backend workloads that require persistent volumes. The node also runs the gateway, acceptors, and the UI backend.

  • The second node (instana-1), which is labeled as node-role.instana.io: "datastore" during installation, is used for running data stores.

  • The third node (instana-2), which is labeled as node-role.instana.io: "other" during installation, is used for running the rest of Instana workloads.

CPU and memory requirements

Each node requires CPU and memory as specified in the following table.

Table 1. CPU and memory requirements of each node in a multi-node cluster
Installation type
or feature
Number of CPU cores Memory (GB)
production 12 48

For each optional feature that you want to use, you need extra resources. For more information, see Table 3. CPU and memory requirements of production installation type.

You can provision the extra resources on node0 (instana0) and node2 (instana-2). Do not provision the resources on node1 (instana-1) as node1 is primarily used for the data stores.

Storage requirements

The storage requirement of each node is based on the use of the node. The disk type and IOPS requirements are the same as specified in Storage requirements.

The four data storage directories are required on the following nodes. You must add additional disks on these nodes.

  • Objects directory on node0 (instana-0).
  • Data, metrics, and analytics directories on node1 (instana-1).

No additional disk is needed on node2 (instana-2).

The following table provides the storage volume requirements of each node:

Table 2. Cluster storage volume requirements for node0 instana-0
Description Default directory Min size (GB) Comments
Object directory /mnt/instana/stanctl/objects 1000 Override path with --volume-objects
Root directory / 100
$HOME directory (air-gapped) /root or the home directory of users 60 Override with $HOME environment variable. 40 for $HOME directory (air-gapped) and 20 GB for separate disk space.
$HOME directory (non-air-gapped) /root or the home directory of users 10 Override with $HOME environment variable
Cluster data directory /var/lib 100 Override with --cluster-data-dir
Total storage volume 1100
Table 3. Cluster storage volume requirements for node1 instana-1
Description Default directory Min size (GB) Comments
Data directory /mnt/instana/stanctl/data 500 Override path with --volume-data
Metrics directory /mnt/instana/stanctl/metrics 1000
Analytics directory /mnt/instana/stanctl/analytics 1200
Root directory / 100
$HOME directory (air-gapped) /root or the home directory of users 60 Override with $HOME environment variable. 40 for $HOME directory (air-gapped) and 20 GB for separate disk space.
$HOME directory (non-air-gapped) /root or the home directory of users 10 Override with $HOME environment
Cluster data directory /var/lib 100 Override with --cluster-data-dir
Total storage volume 2800
Table 4. Cluster storage volume requirements for node2 instana-2
Description Default directory Min size (GB) Comments
Root directory / 100
$HOME directory (air-gapped) /root or the home directory of users 60 Override with $HOME environment variable. 40 for $HOME directory (air-gapped) and 20 GB for separate disk space.
$HOME directory (non-air-gapped) /root or the home directory of users 10 Override with $HOME environment
Cluster data directory /var/lib 100 Override with -—cluster-data-dir
Total storage volume 100

Networking requirements

Make sure that you meet the following ports and IP addresses requirements. For more information about opening these ports, see Firewall rules.

Make sure that you have a high-speed, low-latency, and stable connection with the designated backend server for all agents to download the packages.

Required ports

The following ports on all nodes must be open and accessible.

Table 5. Multi-node ports
Port number Direction Protocol Source Description
22 Inbound TCP External Port required for Secure Shell (SSH) connection (required only if you want to log in SSH)
22 Inbound TCP Internal SSH port required for access between backend nodes
80 Inbound TCP External HTTP protocol for Instana console UI
443 Inbound TCP External HTTPS protocol for Instana console UI, Instana console API, Instana EUM, OpenTelemetry, and Instana agent acceptor port
443 Outbound TCP External Required only in online environments. For more information, see Outbound network access requirements for self-hosted Instana deployments.
53 Inbound TCP/UDP Internal (all nodes) DNS port required for resolving domain names
6443 Inbound TCP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
8443 Inbound TCP External Instana agent acceptor port. This port is optional.
10250 Inbound TCP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
2379 Inbound TCP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
2380 Inbound TCP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
5001 Inbound TCP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
8472 Inbound UDP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
9443 Inbound TCP Internal (all nodes) Internal service port
all Inbound TCP/UDP 10.42.0.0/16 and 10.43.0.0/16 Subnets of the self-hosted Instana components
all Inbound TCP/UDP Loopback Open the ports to allow a VM to send and receive its own data packets.

See the following notes:

  • External source means that the port must be accessible from outside of the Instana self-hosted enterprise (private) network.
  • Internal source means that the port on one node must be accessible by the other two nodes of the multi-node cluster.
  • IP addresses 10.42.0.0/16 and 10.43.0.0/16 must be able to access all ports (1 - 65535) internally.
  • The firewall must trust all traffic from the loopback address.
  • Port 443 outbound is needed for accessing certain repositories. For more information, see Outbound network access requirements.

IP addresses

The three nodes of your multi-node cluster must meet the following IP address requirements:

  • All the three nodes need a private IP address on the same private VLAN to be able to communicate with each other.
  • node0 (instana-0) must also have a public IP address for external communication. The public IP address is also used to reach the hosts from outside the cluster.

What's next

Proceed with preparing your environment.