Instana deployment options

IBM Instana® delivers modern real-time application observability for any environment—cloud-native, hybrid or entirely on premises. Whether deployed as a fully managed SaaS or self-hosted inside your own infrastructure, you get unmatched capabilities, automation and speed.

Two deployment options:

• SaaS: Managed by IBM. Fast to deploy. Zero infrastructure management. Available in North America, Europe, India, Singapore and Japan.
• Self-hosted: Deployed on your terms, behind your firewall, with full data and governance control.

Other benefits of self-hosted:

• Supports multiple architectures, including Linux x86_64 and Linux arm64 for improved performance and cost efficiency (for example, AWS).
• Offers control over data retention policies and access to advanced features like logs in context at no additional cost (IBM).
• Capable of running in air-gapped environments with or without internet connectivity.

Self-hosted Instana provides the full power of SaaS—but in your environment. Ideal for organizations with strict compliance, data residency or air-gapped requirements.

Key benefits:

• Audit-ready and air-gap capable. Keep full control over observability for regulated environments or restricted networks.
• Control your data. Enforce data sovereignty and custom retention policies on your terms.
• Automated deployment (standard edition). For most deployments, the stanctl tool automates cluster deployment, data store installation, updates and more. For at-scale deployments, advanced automation and orchestration methods can be used to fit enterprise needs learn more.
• Integrates with your environment. Deploy Instana alongside your stack, behind your firewalls, with flexible infrastructure support.

No matter how you deploy Instana, you get:

• 100% same core capabilities and automation across models.
• 1-second real-time metrics and traces, no sampling.
• 3 ways OpenTelemetry-native, Cloud-native or Instana’s agent technology.
• 360° end-to-end observability across apps, services and infrastructure.

Instana is designed with OpenTelemetry and open standards in mind, ensuring compatibility with evolving observability architectures and giving you flexibility for the future.

Instana’s self-hosted option powers observability for some of the world’s most complex systems—from modern cloud-native stacks to mission-critical IBM environments.

• Self-hosted on IBM Power Systems. Learn more.
• Installing agents on IBM i. Read more.
• Support for IBM Z®. Extend enterprise workloads with mainframe observability.

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