What's new in IBM Instana Observability for z/OS

Get a quick overview of what is added, changed, improved, or deprecated in each release.

IBM Instana Observability for z/OS brings Instana APM observability to mainframe application environments. It allows application and SRE teams to get end-to-end observability from mobile through mainframe and work seamlessly with the separately licensed Instana APM offering for distributed platforms.

The latest available service

Download the latest service of Instana Observability for z/OS. Depending on the platform you are using, download the available fixes for both host and distributed machines from:

Z APM Connect 6.2.0 Fix Pack 1

What's added

IBM Z APM Connect supports the following enhancements:

  • Timestamp adjustment for transactions generated in the z/OS environment where UTC is not defined as the time-of-day (TOD) clock base.

    Note: Supports the spans generated in the Instana or OpenTelemetry format.

  • Tracing transactions through the CICS Transaction Server for z/OS v6.2.

  • Tracing transactions from the .NET client applications calling the CICS Transaction Gateway for z/OS (CTG) v9.3 or later. Additionally, this release supports tracing the Java client applications using the W3C traceparent method as an alternative to the existing Tracking Token method.

    Note: Supports the spans generated in the Instana format.

  • For CICS transactions that come in without an upstream trace context, IBM Z APM Connect creates a trace parent and traces the CICS transactions.

    Note: To use this feature, you must install PTF UJ97022 (APAR OA67476).

What's changed

  • The version number of the Distributed Gateway images and packages will be in the year.month.iteration format. For example, 25.2.0.
  • Redis configuration is updated for cluster deployment to improve the transaction throughput. The changes will automatically take effect after you upgrade.
  • Security updates for images and their dependencies:
    • Updated the Universal Base Images (UBI) that the Z APM Connect Distributed Gateway uses, including the build dependencies for security enhancement.
    • Updated Kafka and Redis build dependencies for security enhancement.
    • Updated Kafka image version to 3.9.0.
    • Updated Redis image version to 6.2.16.

What's fixed

The following defects are fixed as part of the v6.2.0-1 fix pack:

  • In the previous releases, the fields in the source section on the Instana UI Analytics page displayed information about the destination service. This is fixed to show the correct information in both the source and destination section, respectively.
  • The Instana UI displayed VSAM as SDK. This is changed, the Instana UI now shows VSAM as database. The VSAM icon is updated to the database icon in the dependency graph.
  • CTG request exit was not terminating properly after processing the events. This issue is fixed.
  • The CTG log level was set to debug by default upon initialization. The default log level is now info.
  • In the CICS Data Producer configuration, if TYPE=Q or TYPE=O was not set, the MQ Backend would not be reported. This has been fixed and the MQ Backend will now be shown, regardless of TYPE=Q or Type=O.
  • z/OS Connect EE interceptor did not print the error accurately when no tracing header is present. An error message has been added.