Installing the host agent on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

To install and configure the Instana host agent as a Daemonset within your Kubernetes cluster, you need to customize the host agent's YAML file.

The host agent's YAML file creates the instana-agent namespace in which the DaemonSet is created. This enables you to tag agents to quickly identify them, to stop them, or to to delete the instana-agent namespace.

Install and run the host agent

To install and run the host agent, complete the following steps:

  1. Sign in to the Instana UI, and then select an option to display the agent catalog; for example, on the home page, click Deploy Agent.

    If you are starting a new trial instance of Instana, the agent catalog is displayed with a prompt to select a host agent to install.

  2. Click either of the following tiles:

    • Kubernetes - AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
    • AWS - Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes (EKS)

  3. Enter the cluster name and (optionally) the agent zone:

    • Cluster name (INSTANA_KUBERNETES_CLUSTER_NAME): Used to customize the zone grouping displayed on the infrastructure map. It also sets the default name of the cluster.|
    • Agent zone (INSTANA_ZONE): The customised name of the cluster monitored by this daemonset.

    All of the other required parameters are pre-filled.

  4. Download or copy the host agent's YAML. For example, click Download to download the YAML to the deployment.yaml file.

  5. (Optional) Make other changes to the Kubernetes configuration in the host agent's YAML file. For more information about the configuration options, see Additional Kubernetes configuration.

  6. To configure and start the host agent through kubectl, run the following command:

    kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

If you make any edits to the deployment.yaml file after starting the host agent through kubectl, you must recreate the DaemonSet. For more information about the configuration options and recreating the DaemonSet, see Additional Kubernetes configuration.

Checking the status of the host agent

After you install the host agent, you can check the status of the host agent in the Instana UI or on the host. For more information, see Checking the status of the host agent.

Additional Kubernetes configuration

For information about additional Kubernetes configuration, see the following sections in our Kubernetes docs:

Note: If you make any edits to the deployment.yaml file after starting the host agent through kubectl, you must recreate the DaemonSet by running the following commands:

kubectl delete -f deployment.yaml
kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

Troubleshooting agent deployment

If installing the agent is not successful at first, you can check log messages and troubleshooting tips. If this troubleshooting section does not answer the questions you have, contact the IBM Instana support team with information about your experience, so that we can help you and update our documentation accordingly.

For troubleshooting information that is general to all host agents, see Managing host agents / Troubleshooting.