Monitoring New Relic (private preview)

With Instana, you can monitor New Relic, which is a set of observability tools for monitoring IT infrastructure, such as hosts and virtual machines. For more information about the New Relic product, see the New Relic documentation.

After you install the Instana host agent, the Instana New Relic sensor is automatically installed. You can view the New Relic monitored hosts and their associated metrics and events in the Instana UI after you configure the sensor. For more information about the configuration of the sensor, see Configuring the New Relic sensor.

Supported information

Supported OS

The supported operating systems of the New relic sensor are consistent with host agents requirements, which can be checked in the Supported operating systems section of each host agent, such as Supported operating systems for Unix.

Configuring the New Relic sensor

You must configure the New Relic sensor with the endpoint and API key for the New Relic instance that you want to connect to. The following code snippet shows the fields that you must configure in the agent configuration file <agent_install_dir>/etc/instana/configuration.yaml:

com.instana.plugin.newrelic:
  enabled: true
  endpoint: "https://api.newrelic.com/graphql"
  api_user_key: redacted
  accountID: redacted
  poll_rate: 30

The following table contains the supported configuration options:

Name Type Required Default Description
enabled boolean No False This variable verifies whether the sensor is enabled.
endpoint string Yes NA The NerdGraph endpoint that the New Relic sensor connects to.
accountID integer Yes NA Your New Relic Account ID.
api_user_key string Yes NA The API key that is used to access the endpoint. The New Relic sensor uses a "User" type API key.
poll_rate integer No 30 The number of seconds between metric queries. This time might need to be adjusted to account for any poll rate limit imposed by your endpoint.
target_zone string No NA The name of the generic zone where your New Relic monitored hosts are displayed on the Instana Infrastructure Map. If not specified, hosts are displayed in Undefined Zone.

New Relic endpoint

The Instana New Relic sensor uses the NerdGraph API to collect information about the hosts that New Relic is monitoring. The API endpoint is required to communicate with New Relic. The hostname varies depending on the region where your New Relic instance is deployed, but the endpoint must always contain the /graphql suffix.

New Relic API key

An API key is required to authenticate with the New Relic API. New Relic uses several different types of API keys. The New Relic sensor requires a "User" type API key. For more information about how to create a New Relic API key, see the New Relic documentation.

Viewing metrics

To view the metrics, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Infrastructure.
  2. Click a New Relic monitored host.

Then, you can see a remote host dashboard with all the collected New Relic metrics.

Configuration data

  • OS (type and name)
  • CPU count
  • Total Memory
  • Hostname and FQDN
  • File System (name and capacity)
  • Network interface (names, MAC, and IP addresses)

Performance metrics

  • CPU Used %
  • CPU Load (Linux only)
  • Memory Used
  • Swap Used (Linux only)
  • File System (percent used, reads or writes, and inode usage)
  • Network RX and TX Bytes

Viewing events

New Relic tracks several different event types. Events of the type InfrastructureEvent are imported into Instana as changes. To view the changes, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Events.
  2. To filter out events that are not changes, click the Changes tab.
  3. To filter on changes that are imported from New Relic, enter the following query in the search box: entity.remote.host.source:Newrelic

Then, you can see a list of the infrastructure events that are imported from New Relic. New Relic infrastructure events are tracking changes to system or inventory state, and are therefore opened as changes without a specified duration.

Troubleshooting

Agent monitoring issues

If the New Relic sensor cannot communicate with the New Relic server, an agent monitoring issue is created. The issue describes which configuration parameter might be incorrect. For example, if the sensor receives an HTTP 401 or 403 error from the New Relic server, the API key is likely incorrect or expired. The following configuration parameters can lead to agent monitoring issues:

  • endpoint
  • api_user_key (HTTP 401/403)
  • poll_rate (HTTP 429)

Agent OutOfMemoryError

If you are connected to a New Relic server that is monitoring many hosts, the JVM heap size of the Instana agent might have to be increased. If you find an OutOfMemoryError in the agent log, consider increasing the Instana agent's maximum heap size. For more information, see the JAVA_OPTS environment variable in the Environment variable reference.