Collecting telemetry data using Instana

IBM® Instana Observability (Instana) is an observability platform that helps you analyze and troubleshoot microservices and containerized applications. It provides automated application performance monitoring, end-user experience monitoring, root cause analysis, and anomaly detection. With Instana, you can gain complete visibility into the health and performance of your applications and services.

Instana automatically makes your applications and services visible, provides context to that observed information, and then empowers you to take intelligent action based on that information.

Before you begin

  1. Install the Instana agent in IBM Software Hub. For more information, see Installing IBM Instana Observability for IBM Software Hub.
  2. Enable the gRPC and HTTP ports in the Instana agent configuration based on the deployment method (Helm or Kubernetes/OpenShift operator) to allow the agent to communicate with services using OpenTelemetry for collecting telemetry data.
    • For Helm installation to deploy Instana agent, run the following commands:
      helm upgrade instana-agent \
            --repo https://agents.instana.io/helm \
            --namespace instana-agent \
            --set opentelemetry.grpc.enabled= true \
            --set opentelemetry.http.enabled =true
    • For Kubernetes or OpenShift operator to deploy the Instana agent, add the following configuration to the agent yaml:
      com.instana.plugin.opentelemetry:
           grpc:
             enabled: true
           http:
             enabled: true
  3. Enable Opentelemetry for the required service in IBM® watsonx.data. See Enabling OpenTelemetry for services in watsonx.data.

Procedure

Follow the steps to check the Instana UI for OpenTelemetry data:

  1. To see the traces generated for a query:
    1. Go to Analytics in the Instana UI and select Services.
    2. Choose the relevant service from the list: Presto or Milvus.
    3. Filter traces by Service Name, Call Name, or Retention Period of last 5, 10, 30 minutes.
    4. Click on a specific trace to view in detail.
  2. To see the metrics generated for a query:
    1. Go to Analytics in the Instana UI and select Infrastructure-Opentelemetry.
    2. Choose the relevant service from the list: presto-jmx (for Presto) or Milvus.
    3. Review the list of custom metrics and their associated attributes.
    4. Click on a specific metric to view the live time series.