Pipeline feedback integrations

The following sections explain how to integrate Pipeline Feedback Release Markers with your CI/CD pipeline.

Releases API

Our Releases API provides endpoints to create, read, update, and delete a release. Release markers can be created with four different scopes:

  • Global
  • Application Perspective
  • Service
  • Service within an Application Perspective

In the following example, a curl command is used to create a new global release marker named My First Global Release at the given point in time (as UNIX timestamp in milliseconds):

curl --location --request POST "{{base}}/api/releases" \
  --header "Authorization: apiToken {{apiToken}}" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data "{
	\"name\": \"My First Global Release\",
	\"start\": 1601890420046,
}"

The "start" value needs to be a timestamp in milliseconds.

This release marker is shown on all dashboard pages for Applications, Services, and Endpoints.

To create a release marker based on an existing Application Perspective, add the applications with a list of application names to the request body.

curl --location --request POST "{{base}}/api/releases" \
  --header "Authorization: apiToken {{apiToken}}" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data "{
	\"name\": \"My First Application Scoped Release\",
	\"start\": 1601890420046,
	\"applications\": [
      {
        \"name\": \"My Application\" 
      }
    ]
}"

This release marker is shown on the dashboard for the Application My Application.

The following snippet shows how to create a release marker for a given service.

curl --location --request POST "{{base}}/api/releases" \
  --header "Authorization: apiToken {{apiToken}}" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data "{
	\"name\": \"My First Service Scoped Release\",
	\"start\": 1601890420046,
	\"services\": [
      {
        \"name\": "\"my-service\"
      }
    ]
}"

This service scoped release marker is shown on the dashboards for the Service my-service and all Application dashboards that contain the Service my-service. A service scoped release marker can also be created for a given set of applications.

curl --location --request POST "{{base}}/api/releases" \
  --header "Authorization: apiToken {{apiToken}}" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
  --data "{
	\"name\": \"My First Service Scoped Release\",
	\"start\": 1601890420046,
	\"services\": [
      {
        \"name\": \"my-service\",
        \"scopedTo\": {
          \"applications\": [
            {
              \"name\": \"My Application\"
            }
          ]
        }
      }
    ]
}"

The given Release Marker will be shown only for the Service my-service within the given Application My Application, but not for other services within the Application.

The used API Token requires the permission "Configuration of releases".

Integrations

CircleCI

The Instana Pipeline Feedback orb allows you to create new releases and track the latest release from the comfort of your CircleCI workflows.

Concourse

The Instana Pipeline Feedback resource allows you to create new releases and track the latest release from the comfort of your Concourse CI pipeline.

GitHub Actions

Taimos has built a integration for GitHub actions.

Harness

Harness has built Continuous Verification integration with Instana to monitor your deployments and production applications.

Jenkins

Alternatively, we offer a Jenkins plug-in to allow a smoother integration with your existing CI/CD tools. The plug-in and further information can be found on GitHub.

BOSH Deployments

To access this functionality, you require the Instana Microservices Application Monitoring for Pivotal Platform tile version 1.166.1 and later.

Important: The status of the Pipeline Feedback functionality is currently experimental. In foundations with many service instances, each of which usually has a dedicated BOSH deployment, it may become a bit too chatty. Let us know what you think of it!

The Instana tile automatically detects BOSH deployments running across the Pivotal Platform foundation, and as part of the Pipeline Feedback functionality within Instana, these deployments are reported as releases.

For more information, see our Pipeline Feedback documentation.

To opt-in to the "Pipeline Feedback for BOSH deployments" feature, activate the Agent automatic configurations > [Experimental] Pipeline Feedback for BOSH option within the Instana tile configurations in OpsManager.

Make sure to configure the following settings correctly:

  • Backend connection > API endpoint URL: must point to your tenant unit in Instana.
  • Backend connection > API token: requires an API token with, at least, the Configuration of releases permission. For more information, see our API Tokens documentation.

To roll out the change, select Apply Changes in OpsManager for the VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs -- formerly known as Pivotal Application Service (PAS) -- or VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid -- formerly known as Pivotal Container Service (PKS) -- tile.