Managing actions (Open Beta)

Instana has introduced an action framework where you can use automation to perform an action to diagnose and remediate events. Using the action catalog, you can create new actions or integrate with existing automation through a script, webhook, or other 3rd-party automation providers. These actions can be associated with various Instana events, and can be run by using an action sensor on the Instana agent.

Notes

  • The action framework is available as Open Beta in Instana. For more information, refer to this blog post.
  • Action script sensor is only supported (currently) for agents that run on Linux operating systems.
  • Currently, actions can only be associated to events of type Issue.
  • When you view the output logs from the run of action, the output logs may not appear immediately. If the initial view is empty, reloading the page will make the logs appear when they are available.
  • The action framework is not supported on a self-hosted (on-premises) Docker environment.

Prerequisites

Deploying and configuring action sensors

To run actions, you need to enable the actions sensors that correspond to your action types. Ensure that you have deployed and configured the following action sensors on one or more agents:

Enabling feature flag

To use the automation framework on self-hosted Instana environments, the feature flag must be enabled for the action framework.

Self-hosted Instana on Docker (on-premises)

  1. Enable the feature flag in the settings.hcl file, which is generated automatically when you install the Instana backend:
    ...
feature "actionAutomationEnabled" {
    enabled=true
}
...
  2. Apply the changes by running the instana update command.

Note: For more information about self-hosted Instana backend on Docker (on-premises), see enabling feature flags.

Self-hosted Instana on Kubernetes/OpenShift (on-premises)

  1. Enable the feature flag in the core.yaml file as follows:
    apiVersion: instana.io/v1beta2
kind: Core
metadata:
  name: instana-core
  namespace: core
spec:
  ...
  featureFlags:
    - name:  feature.automation.enabled
      enabled: true
    - name:  feature.action.automation.enabled
      enabled: true
  ...
  2. Apply the changes by running the command kubectl apply -f core.yaml.

Note: For more information about self-hosted Instana backend on Kubernetes/OpenShift (on-premises), see feature flags API reference.

Configuring user permissions

The following user permissions are required to work with the action framework:

  • Configuration of automation actions: Required to access the Action Catalog, add, delete, or modify actions, and associate actions to event types.
  • Running of automation actions: Required to run actions (either from event context or through “Test” in the action catalog).
  • Configuration of Events, Alerts and Smart Alerts: Required to associate actions to event types.

Note: For information about how to configure users, roles, and permissions, see Managing user access.

Procedure

To use the action framework in Instana, follow the steps:

  1. Enable the action sensors on one or more Instana agents where you can run actions. For more information, see Deploying and configuring action sensors.
  2. In the Instana UI, go to Automation>Action Catalog. For more information, see action catalog.
  3. Associate the actions from the catalog directly by using Instana event definitions. It provides access to actions from the context of an event occurrence. For more information, see Action associations.
  4. Run an action directly from an event instance. For more information, see Running actions.
  5. From the Instana UI, go to Analytics>Logs. You can view the output of an action that is run. For more information, see Action output.