Smart Alerts
Intelligent alerting with zero configuration by using ready blueprints, statistical models, and adaptive thresholds to reduce alert fatigue and focus on real problems.
Overview
Smart Alerts provide intelligent, context-aware alerting for your application perspectives. Instead of manually configuring thresholds and queries, you can select from pre-built alert blueprints that apply successful patterns for detecting slow calls, errors, throughput anomalies, and more.
Instana offers both simple mode (zero configuration) and advanced mode (full customization). Smart Alerts use statistical models and adaptive thresholds to automatically adjust to your application's normal behavior, reducing false positives and alert fatigue.
Key features
Smart Alerts include the following key features:
- Zero-configuration blueprints: Pre-built alerts for common scenarios (slow calls, errors, HTTP status codes).
- Statistical threshold models: Adaptive thresholds that learn your application's normal behavior.
- Simple and advanced modes: Start with blueprints, customize when needed.
- Multi-channel notifications: Send alerts to Slack, PagerDuty, email, webhooks, and more.
- Alert grouping: Reduce noise by grouping related alerts.
- Custom payloads: Include relevant context in alert notifications.
Common use cases
See the following example use cases:
- Performance degradation alerts
- Get notified when response times exceed normal baselines. Use statistical thresholds to avoid false positives during expected traffic spikes.
- Error rate monitoring
- Alert when error rates increase beyond acceptable levels. Identify problems before they impact too many users.
- Availability monitoring
- Get immediate notification when services become unavailable or throughput drops to zero.
- SLA compliance
- Alert when service level objectives are at risk or violated. Maintain service level agreement commitments with proactive monitoring.
Where to find it in the UI
You can access Smart Alerts from the following locations in the UI:
- Smart Alerts tab: Go to Applications, select an application, and select the Smart Alerts tab.
- Alert configuration: Click Create Smart Alert to set up new alerts.
- Alert channels: Go to Settings > Global settings > Alert channels.
- Alert history: View triggered alerts in the Events view.
What problems does this solve?
Smart Alerts address the following common alerting challenges:
- Alert fatigue: Reduce false positives with statistical models and adaptive thresholds.
- Configuration complexity: Skip manual adjustments of threshold by using zero-config blueprints.
- Missed incidents: Identify problems early by using successful alert patterns.
- Context loss: Include relevant traces, metrics, and logs in alert notifications.
- Notification chaos: Group related alerts and route to appropriate channels.
Related capabilities
The following capabilities work together with Smart Alerts:
- Application perspectives - Define the scope for your alerts
- Events and incidents - View triggered alerts as events
- Service level objectives - Alert on SLO violations
- Automation and actions - Automate responses to the alerts
Learn more
For detailed information about Smart Alerts, alert channels, and advanced configuration, see Smart Alerts documentation.