Automation and actions

Overview

With Instana's automation capabilities, you can create automated responses to incidents, reducing manual work and accelerating problem resolution. You can configure actions that run automatically when specific conditions are met. For example, restarting a service, scaling resources, or triggering remediation workflows.

Automation helps you respond to common issues instantly, prevent recurring problems, and free up your team to focus on more complex challenges. By codifying your incident response procedures, you can ensure consistent, reliable responses even when experienced team members aren't available.

Key features

Automation and actions include the following key features:

• Event-driven actions: Trigger actions automatically based on events, incidents, or metric thresholds
• Pre-built integrations: Connect to popular tools like Ansible, Kubernetes, AWS, and more
• Custom scripts: Run custom remediation scripts or API calls
• Approval workflows: Require human approval before running critical actions
• Action history: Track all automated actions with complete audit trails
• Rollback capabilities: Automatically revert actions if they don't resolve the issue

Common use cases

See the following example use cases:

Auto-remediation

Automatically restart failed services, clear caches, or scale resources when issues are detected. Resolve common problems without human intervention.

Incident enrichment

Automatically gather diagnostic information when incidents occur. Collect logs, thread dumps, heap dumps, or run diagnostic commands to speed up troubleshooting.

Runbook automation

Convert manual runbooks into automated workflows. Run multi-step remediation procedures consistently and reliably.

Preventive actions

Take action before problems escalate. Scale resources proactively when load increases, or throttle traffic when services show signs of stress.

Where to find it in the UI

You can access automation and actions from the following locations in the UI:

• Actions configuration: Go to Automation > Actions
• Action history: See Automation > Action history view
• Action logs: Go to Settings > Security > access > Audit trail > Action log tab
• Approval queue: From the Action log tab, filter the entries to get the pending approval requests
• Manual triggers: Manually trigger actions from Events > Incidents , select an incident, select from recommended actions

What problems does this solve?

Automation and actions address the following common operational challenges:

• Slow incident response: Reduce MTTR by automating common remediation steps
• Manual toil: Eliminate repetitive manual tasks during incidents
• Inconsistent responses: Make sure there is reliable, consistent handling of incidents
• After-hours incidents: Resolve issues automatically without waking the team
• Knowledge silos: Codify tribal knowledge into automated workflows

Related capabilities

The following capabilities work together with automation and actions:

• Events and incidents - Trigger actions based on detected events
• Smart Alerts - Combine alerts with automated actions
• Infrastructure monitoring - Automate infrastructure remediation
• Application perspectives - Scope actions to specific applications

Learn more

For detailed information about automation, action types, and best practices, see Automation documentation.