Quick start guide for IT admins

Prerequisites

Before you start, confirm the following prerequisites:

• For SaaS deployments: An Instana SaaS tenant is already provisioned. Contact your IBM representative if you do not have a tenant.
• For self-hosted deployments: You are ready to install it by following the self-hosted installation documentation.
• You have administrator credentials for your Instana tenant or backend.
• You have access to the servers, containers, or Kubernetes clusters that you want to monitor.
• The hosts that you want to monitor have outbound internet access to your Instana backend (for SaaS), or can reach your self-hosted Instana backend.

Backend installation (self-hosted only)

If you are deploying Instana self-hosted (on-premises), you must first install the Instana backend before you install agents. The backend installation process involves setting up the required infrastructure components, including databases, storage, and the Instana server components.

Backend installation requires careful planning and infrastructure preparation. Refer to the self-hosted installation documentation for detailed instructions.

After you complete the backend installation, proceed with the agent installation steps that are described in the following sections.

Note: If you are using Instana SaaS, IBM provisions and manages the backend. You can proceed directly to logging in and installing the agents.

Overview of the setup process

Complete the following steps to install and connect your first Instana agent, and configure your team:

1. Log in as administrator.
2. Install the first agent.
3. Verify agent connection.
4. Install agents on more hosts.

Team configuration:

1. Set up user access.
2. Configure alert channels.
3. Enable Smart Alerts

Log in to Instana

Before you can install agents or configure access for your team, you need to log in and confirm that the Instana backend is reachable.

1. Open your browser and go to your Instana tenant URL.
2. Log in with your administrator credentials. The Home page opens.

Because no agents are installed yet, the dashboard shows no data initially. This is expected.

Install the first agent

The Instana agent is the core component that collects monitoring data from your servers and sends it to the Instana backend. Getting the first agent connected validates your setup before you roll out to more hosts.

To install an agent on a host:

1. In the Instana UI, Go to Agents & collectors.
2. Click Install agents.
3. Select your host type.
4. Follow the instructions on the host page.

The agent typically starts and connects to Instana within a minute.

For more information, see Host agent.

Verify the agent connection

After installation, confirm that the agent is reporting data before you roll out to more hosts.

1. Go to Agents & collectors > Agent details.
2. Find your agent in the list and confirm that its status shows reporting.
3. Click the agent to see the sensors that Instana automatically activated for the technologies that are running on that host (for example, Java, Node.js, MySQL, or NGINX).
4. Go to Infrastructure > Map to see the host appear on the infrastructure map.

Set up user access

Once monitoring is running, your team members need accounts so they can start using Instana. As the admin, you control who gets access and what they can do.

1. Go to Settings > Security & access > Access control.
2. Click Invite user and enter the team member's email address.
3. Assign a role that matches their responsibilities (for example, User for developers and SREs, Admin for other administrators).
4. Click Share.

Invited team members receive an email with a link to set their password and log in.

Configure alert channels

Before your team can be notified about incidents, Instana needs to know where to send alerts. Alert channels define the connection between Instana events and your team's communication tools.

1. Go to Settings > Global settings > Alert channels.
2. Click Add alert channel and select a notification method.
3. Configure the required connection details for the selected channel and click Create.

For more information, see Alerting.

Enable Smart Alerts

Manually defining alert thresholds for every service and metric is time-consuming and error-prone. Smart Alerts automatically learn the normal behavior of your services and infrastructure and alert you when something deviates from the baseline — giving your team monitoring coverage immediately after setup, without any threshold configuration.

1. Go to Events > Smart Alert configurations.
2. Click Create Smart Alert.
3. Choose the scope.
4. Select the alert channel that you configured in the previous step.
5. Click Create.

For more information, see Events and alerts.

Next steps

After you complete the initial setup, consider the following next steps:

• Infrastructure monitoring: Review the infrastructure monitoring documentation to understand what metrics Instana collects from each technology.
• Application perspectives: Work with your DevOps team to create application perspectives that group the related services together for better monitoring.
• Service level objectives (SLOs): Work with your SRE team to set up SLOs to track whether your services are meeting their reliability and performance targets.
• Custom dashboards: Create team dashboards that show the most important metrics for your organization.

Quick reference: Key settings locations