Enabling optional features

Some features in Instana are disabled by default. To enable these features for Self-Hosted Classic Edition (Docker), add feature flags to the settings.hcl file, which is generated automatically when you install the Instana backend as in Installing Instana, and set the enabled field to true. Then, run the command instana update to apply the changes.

BeeInstana Metric Pipeline (public preview)

This feature includes a new data pipeline with additional Instana backend components and a datastore (BeeInstana) to the store of the infrastructure metrics. Based on this data, further features can be activated in the product.

  • Custom Infrastructure dashboards
  • Infrastructure Explore

Ensure that enough free space is available in the storage location for the metric data, and the entire system is not currently being operated at its capacity limits. This is because the additional components might endanger the stability.

An estimated disk size of 1 million metrics can be derived from this table:

Period in seconds Retention Disk size in GBs
10 1 72.72
60 30 418.88
300 90 289.35
3600 395 191.49

To enable the pipeline and Custom Infrastructure dashboards, enable the following feature flag in the settings.hcl file, and apply this change by using an instana update command to the system.

feature "beeinstana" {
  enabled=true
}

Furthermore, you can activate Infrastructure Explore by using the following feature flag:

feature "infraEntityExplore" {
  enabled=true
}

The Native histogram metric support (public preview) feature is not available for Classic Edition.

SAP monitoring feature flag

To enable the SAP monitoring feature flag, set the following option in the settings.hcl file:

feature "sapEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

PCF feature flag

To enable the VMware Tanzu (PCF) feature, set the following option in the settings.hcl file:

feature "pcfEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

For more information about this optional feature, see Monitoring Cloud Foundry and VMware Tanzu (formerly know as Pivotal Cloud Foundry).

VMware® vSphere feature flag

To enable the VMware vSphere monitoring feature, set the following option in the settings.hcl file:

feature "vsphereEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

For more information about this optional feature, see Monitoring vSphere.

IBM Z HMC feature flag

To enable the IBM Z HMC monitoring feature, set the following option in the settings.hcl file:

feature "zhmcEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

For more information about this optional feature, see Monitoring IBM Z HMC.

IBM Power HMC feature flag

To enable the IBM Power HMC monitoring feature, set the following option in the settings.hcl file:

feature "phmcEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

For more information about this optional feature, see Monitoring IBM Power HMC.

IBM J9 VM memory leak detection feature flag

To enable the memory leak detection of IBM J9 VM feature, set the following option in the settings.hcl file:

feature "rulesMemoryleakEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

For more information about this optional feature, see the JVM section of the Built-in Events Reference page.

Feature flags for the Get answers button

To enhance the user experience, WalkMe and AssistMe are integrated with the Get answers button. To enable the Get answers button feature flag, set the following option in the settings.hcl file. You can click the Get answers button in the Instana UI to use its features.

feature "assistmeEnabled" {
  enabled=true
}

Feature flags for public preview capabilities

Instana provides some capabilities as public preview features. To enable any of those features, see Optional Features (public preview)