Environment variables

The following environment variables are valid for all agents (both host and containerized).

Environment variable	Required	Default value	Description
JAVA_OPTS	No	N/A	Additional Java® virtual machine configurations that you might want to pass to the startup of the host agent. For example, you might use -Xms<value> and -Xmx<value> to set the minimum and maximum amount of heap available to the agent, respectively.
ENABLE_AGENT_SOCKET	No	true	The variable to determine the Instana agent's communication direction with JVMs. To allow communication to be directed to the agent, set this variable to true. To direct communication to the JVM, set this variable to false.
INSTANA_AGENT_TLS_1_0	No	false	Enable TLS v1.0.
INSTANA_AGENT_TLS_1_1	No	false	Enable TLS v1.1.
INSTANA_JVM_BYTEBUDDY_ATTACHMENT_ENABLED	No	true	This variable enables or disables JVM attachment by using byte buddy.
INSTANA_AGENT_OTEL_GRPC	No	false	Enable OTEL GRPC-server.
INSTANA_AGENT_OTEL_HTTP	No	false	Enable OTEL HTTP-server.
INSTANA_AGENT_OTEL_GRPC_PORT	No	4317	Override OTEL GRPC-port number.
INSTANA_AGENT_OTEL_HTTP_PORT	No	4318	Override OTEL HTTP-port number.
INSTANA_APPEND_FQDN_TO_AGENT_ID	No	false	Appends hostname to agent ID to ensure uniqueness across identical hosts. For more information, see Agent ID conflicts due to identical MAC addresses
IN_MEMORY_CLASSLOADER	No	false	Uses the in-memory-classloader for loading JVM Java agents inside containers, instead of file-based JARs. When enabled, the required free storage is reduced to 3.5 MB, but at the cost of additional heap consumption.
INSTANA_GIT_REMOTE_REPOSITORY	No	N/A	Git remote URL to be used by the agent for Git-based configuration management. The variable must be set if INSTANA_GIT_REMOTE_BRANCH is set.
INSTANA_GIT_REMOTE_BRANCH	No	N/A	Git remote branch to be tracked by the agent for Git-based configuration management. The variable must be set if INSTANA_GIT_REMOTE_REPOSITORY is set.
INSTANA_GIT_REMOTE_USERNAME	No	N/A	Optional: The username or access token to be used in basic authentication for Git operations.
INSTANA_GIT_REMOTE_PASSWORD	No	N/A	Optional: The password to be used in basic authentication for Git operations.
INSTANA_AGENT_UPDATES_VERSION	No	N/A	Pins the sensor versions to a specific SHA. Starting with Agent Bootstrap 1.2.49, this environment variable can also be used to set the agent version.

The following environment variables are specific to the containerized agent.

Environment variable	Required	Default value	Description
INSTANA_LOG_LEVEL	Yes	INFO	Controls the log level of com.instana packages. Possible values: INFO, DEBUG, TRACE, WARN, ERROR, or OFF.
INSTANA_ROOT_LOGGER_LOG_LEVEL	No	INFO	Controls the log level of all other packages that are not covered by INSTANA_LOG_LEVEL. Possible values: INFO, DEBUG, TRACE, WARN, ERROR, or OFF.
INSTANA_ROOT_LOGGER_CONSOLE_APPENDER_LOG_LEVEL	No	INFO	Defines the log level that is printed to the console (stdout) and collected by the container logging. Possible values: INFO, DEBUG, TRACE, WARN, ERROR, or OFF.
INSTANA_AGENT_KEY	Yes	N/A	Your Instana agent key.
INSTANA_AGENT_ENDPOINT	No	N/A	The host agent endpoint.
INSTANA_AGENT_ENDPOINT_PORT	No	N/A	The host agent endpoint port.
INSTANA_AGENT_ZONE	No	N/A	The zone to place the host agent.
INSTANA_AGENT_TAGS	No	N/A	Comma-separated list of tags that are associated with the host that runs the agent, such as my_tag=myvalue,my_other_tag.
INSTANA_AGENT_MODE	No	APM	The agent mode. Available values are APM, INFRASTRUCTURE, AWS, or OFF.
INSTANA_DOWNLOAD_KEY	No	N/A	Your Instana download key.
INSTANA_AGENT_UPDATES_FREQUENCY	No	DAY	Controls the frequency at which sensor updates are fetched. For more information, see Updates and version pinning.
INSTANA_AGENT_UPDATES_TIME	No	04:30	Controls the time at which sensor updates are fetched. For more information, see Updates and version pinning.
INSTANA_AGENT_PROXY_HOST	No	N/A	The hostname/address of a proxy.
INSTANA_AGENT_PROXY_PORT	No	N/A	The port of a proxy.
INSTANA_AGENT_PROXY_PROTOCOL	No	N/A	The proxy protocol, such as http.
INSTANA_AGENT_PROXY_USER	No	N/A	The username of the proxy auth.
INSTANA_AGENT_PROXY_PASSWORD	No	N/A	The password of the proxy auth.
INSTANA_AGENT_PROXY_USE_DNS	No	false	Boolean if the proxy also uses DNS.
INSTANA_REPOSITORY_PROXY_ENABLED	No	N/A	Enables overriding proxy settings specifically for sensor updates.
INSTANA_REPOSITORY_PROXY_HOST	No	N/A	The hostname/address of a proxy for the Maven sensors repository.
INSTANA_REPOSITORY_PROXY_PORT	No	N/A	The port of a proxy for the Maven sensors repository.
INSTANA_REPOSITORY_PROXY_PROTOCOL	No	N/A	The proxy protocol for the Maven sensors repository.
INSTANA_REPOSITORY_PROXY_USER	No	N/A	The username of the proxy auth for the Maven sensors repository.
INSTANA_REPOSITORY_PROXY_PASSWORD	No	N/A	The password of the proxy auth for the Maven sensors repository.
INSTANA_MVN_REPOSITORY_URL	No	N/A	The host name of the Maven repository for dynamic agent and sensor bundle downloads. For more information, see Configuring agent repository mirror.
INSTANA_MVN_REPOSITORY_FEATURES_PATH	No	N/A	The Maven repository path for feature updates. For more information, see Configuring agent repository mirror.
INSTANA_MVN_REPOSITORY_SHARED_PATH	No	N/A	The Maven repository path for agent and sensor bundle updates. For more information, see Configuring agent repository mirror.
AGENT_RELEASE_REPOSITORY_MIRROR_URL	No	N/A	The URL of the agent release repository mirror. For more information, see Configuring the agent repository as the mirror.
AGENT_RELEASE_REPOSITORY_MIRROR_USERNAME	No	N/A	The username to access the agent release repository mirror. For more information, see Configuring the agent repository as the mirror.
AGENT_RELEASE_REPOSITORY_MIRROR_PASSWORD	No	N/A	The password to access the agent release repository mirror. For more information, see Configuring the agent repository as the mirror.
INSTANA_SHARED_REPOSITORY_MIRROR_URL	No	N/A	The URL of the shared repository mirror. For more information, see Configuring the agent repository as the mirror.
INSTANA_SHARED_REPOSITORY_MIRROR_USERNAME	No	N/A	The username to access the shared repository mirror. For more information, see Configuring the agent repository as the mirror.
INSTANA_SHARED_REPOSITORY_MIRROR_PASSWORD	No	N/A	The password to access the agent features repository mirror. For more information, see Configuring the agent repository as the mirror.

For more information, see the agent configuration docs and agent git-based configuration docs.

Environment Variable	Value	Description
INSTANA_ENDPOINT_URL	String	The Instana backend endpoint that your serverless agents connect to. It depends on your region and is different from the host agent backend endpoint. It starts with https://serverless-.
INSTANA_AGENT_KEY	String	Your Instana Agent key. The same agent key can be used for host agents and serverless monitoring.
INSTANA_TIMEOUT	Integer	Timeout in milliseconds for the HTTP requests reporting data to the Instana backend.
INSTANA_ENDPOINT_PROXY	URL	Set this variable to http://my-proxy.tld or http://user:password@my-proxy.tld to route the reporting of data to the Instana backend over an HTTP(S) proxy.
INSTANA_EXTRA_HTTP_HEADERS	String, semicolon-separated	Semicolon-separated list of HTTP headers to be captured.
INSTANA_SERVICE_NAME	String	Custom service name.
INSTANA_LOG_LEVEL	debug, info, warn, or error	The log level for the Instana package. By default it's info.
INSTANA_LOG_SPANS	true or false	Set this variable to true to have the spans that are generated by the Instana instrumentation, which is dumped to standard out. This setting is useful to debug SDK and automatic instrumentation issues.
INSTANA_DEBUG	String	Set this variable to any value to set the log level to debug.
INSTANA_DISABLE_CA_CHECK	true or false	Set this variable to true to disable verifying the server certificate against the list of CAs baked into the Lambda runtime when it connects to the Instana backend. Enabling this feature makes your lambda vulnerable to MITM attacks for this connection. Use this setting only if you use Instana self-hosted and are unable to operate the Instana backend with a certificate with a known root CA.
INSTANA_SECRETS	String	The value must be structured as follows, <matcher>:<secret>[,<secret>], for example: contains-ignore-case:key,password,secret. See the Secrets documentation for details of the matchers.
INSTANA_TAGS	String, comma-separated	A list of tags, which are comma-separated, and associated with the monitored component, for example my_tag=myvalue,my_other_tag.
INSTANA_ZONE	String	The zone to place this monitored component into.
INSTANA_DISABLE_USE_OPENTELEMETRY	true or false	Set this variable to true to disable opentelemetry integration. The default value is false.
INSTANA_STACK_TRACE_LENGTH	Integer	Set this variable to limit the number of captured stack trace frames in a span.

The Dynamic Language Sensors offered by Instana respect a common set of environment variables. The following table describes this common set.

For more information on Java, Scala, .NET, .NET Core, or PHP, see the corresponding documentation pages.

Environment Variable	Value	Description
INSTANA_AGENT_HOST	IP address or DNS name	Allows users to manually specify location of the Instana host agent.
INSTANA_AGENT_PORT	Port number	Manually specify the port of the Instana host agent.
INSTANA_DISABLE_AUTO_INSTR	true or false	Disables automatic instrumentation.
INSTANA_SERVICE_NAME	String	Sets the application-wide service name.
INSTANA_PROCESS_NAME	String	Sets a custom label for the infrastructure entity that represents that runtime. [1]
INSTANA_DEBUG	Any value	Enables debug logging. Use it only for a limited time to avoid overhead and log spamming.
INSTANA_DISABLE_USE_OPENTELEMETRY	true or false	Set this variable to true to disable opentelemetry integration. The default value is false.
INSTANA_STACK_TRACE_LENGTH	Integer	Set this variable to limit the number of captured stack trace frames in a span.

For information on Java, Scala, .NET, .NET Core, or PHP, see the corresponding documentation pages.

Language	Crystal	Go	Haskell	NGINX	Node.js	PHP	Python	Ruby	.NET Core	.NET
INSTANA_AGENT_HOST	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
INSTANA_AGENT_PORT	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
INSTANA_DISABLE_AUTO_INSTR	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	✅	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌
INSTANA_SERVICE_NAME	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
INSTANA_PROCESS_NAME	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌
INSTANA_DEBUG	✅	✅	❌	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
INSTANA_DISABLE_USE_OPENTELEMETRY	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
INSTANA_STACK_TRACE_LENGTH	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌