Requirements for Instana backend on Docker

For Instana SaaS, you don't need to install the Instana backend. Install only Instana agents as described in the Instana agents.

For Self-Hosted Classic Edition (Docker), you need to install the Instana backend in a Docker environment as described in Self-hosted (on-premises) Instana deployment.

Before you install Classic Edition, ensure that the following requirements are met.

Classic Edition

Supported OS

The following Linux® distributions on x86-64 processors are supported:

  • Ubuntu 18.04
  • Ubuntu 20.04
  • Ubuntu 22.04
  • Debian 10.x
  • Debian 11.x
  • CentOS / Oracle Linux / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.9
  • CentOS / Oracle Linux / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x with Docker CE
  • CentOS / Oracle Linux / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.x with Docker CE
  • Amazon Linux 2.x
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 SP5
  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15

Instana images are based on Red Hat Universal Base Images (UBI), which requires CPU hardware that supports the x86-64-v2 microarchitecture. For more information, see this blog.

Supported Docker versions

The following Docker versions are supported:

  • 24.0+
  • 23.0+
  • 20.10+
  • 19.03+
  • 18.03+

Minimum requirements

The machine where you want to install the Instana backend must have at minimum 12 CPUs and 48 GiB available memory. This is the lowest limit and only recommended for small installations. Production environments must have a minimum size of 16 CPUs and 64 GiB memory.

Network security notes

Don't expose Instana without taking proper precautions.

Make sure to set the firewall properly for the installation. The only ports that you need to expose for a self-hosted installation are as follows:

  • Port 80: Used to detect broken links and promote them to SSL.

  • Port 443: Primary application port for UI and API.

  • Port 86 and 446: EUM ports. For more information, see Exposing the monitoring endpoint to end users.

  • Port 1444: Acceptor port for agents to connect to.

Prerequisites

  • To authenticate against the Docker repository, make sure that the host machine that you want to install the Instana backend can connect to auth-infra.instana.io:443.
  • All installation and migration commands must be run as root user.
  • You must ensure that Docker is installed, and at least 25 GB of free spaces are available for Docker images. For more information about how to install Docker, see the Docker CE or Docker EE documentation.
  • You need to set up the following mount points and external volumes, and configure the mount point for data stores, Cassandra, and ClickHouse with at least 1 TB free spaces:

    • Data stores

      Defaults to /mnt/data.

    • Cassandra

      It can't use the same volume for production installs. Defaults to /mnt/metrics.

    • ClickHouse

      It can't use the same volume for productions installs. Defaults to /mnt/traces.

    • Logs

      Defaults to /var/log/instana. If required, you can create a different directory.