As an IBM monitoring client, are you excited about using observability on the IBM® Instana® platform to monitor your environments but worried that it will mean you have to “rip and replace” your existing monitoring agents? Well, there’s no need to worry anymore. The IBM Instana team has built integration support for current IBM monitoring products. The Instana platform allows you to continue to use your existing IBM Tivoli® Monitoring (ITM), IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM), and IBM Application Performance Monitoring V8 (APM V8), helping ensure that your adoption of IBM Instana Observability will be smooth and straightforward.

What is this integration support?

The integration support between IBM monitoring products and the Instana platform consists of several services, one of which is a transformation service. Metrics collected from currently installed ITM, ITCAM and APM agents are used to create entities in the Instana User Interface (UI) and transformed to appear in the Instana UI. There are multiple ways to add the integration support to your environment, including agent-to-server and server-to-server options, depending on your IBM monitoring product version:

• The IBM Instana Integration Service provides an agent to server transformation services for ITM, ITCAM,and APM V8 agents. In this mode, ITM and ITCAM metrics can be viewed simultaneously on the Instana and ITM UIs.
• The IBM APM V8 Integration support also provides server-to-server transformation services for APM V8 agents. While in this mode, application developers can view metrics from APM V8 agents on both the Instana UI and the APM V8 UI.

As an IBM monitoring client, why should I care?

Advantages offered by the Instana platform:

• Finer-grained historical metric collection
• Modern browser UI with no dependence on Java
• Capability to monitor modern technologies, including Kubernetes and public clouds
• Allows integration of existing monitoring using IBM monitoring with monitoring of modern technologies using the Instana platform
• Single pane of glass that combines native Instana sensors and ITM and APM agents if you’re transitioning to the Instana platform or want a hybrid solution
• Allows decommissioning of your ITM or APM monitoring server, keeping only the agents

IBM monitoring integration support enables a smooth migration from IBM monitoring to the Instana platform. You can simultaneously send collected metrics to the Instana platform and your IBM monitoring product in some scenarios. This feature allows you to preserve existing events and benefit from the Instana built-in event monitoring. It also allows you to continue to view metrics on both the Instana UI and the IBM monitoring product UI. In the agent-to-server option, the integration is accomplished with a simple reconfiguration of the existing agents, adding a second server to receive the metrics from the agents.

So far, I’ve been discussing metrics. ITCAM for transactions clients may be wondering about transactional data. The transactional data collected by ITCAM agents aren’t included in the transform service. Many ITCAM for transactions clients are looking for a better APM solution. The Instana solution provides rich transactional support using modern tracking technologies and having 100% transaction capture. So, consider using Instana agents for your transactional tracing needs. You can combine the capabilities of the Instana platform and your IBM monitoring product to get the best monitoring solution for your environment.

This solution sounds great. When can I get it?

Both the agent-to-server integration for ITM, ITCAM and APM V8, and the server-to-server integration for APM V8 are available now with your Instana license. A subset of existing IBM monitoring agents is supported for both options, with more being added.

For a description of the agent-to-server integration, see this documentation. 

For a description of the server-to-server integration for APM V8, see this documentation.

This solution does sound pretty good, but I rely on specific capabilities of my IBM monitoring products. How do I find out how the Instana platform handles that capability? You can check out the breadth and depth of current capabilities in our documentation. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, contact your IBM seller and ask them to share the roadmap for IBM Instana Observability.

How can I find out more?

You can check out IBM Instana Observability by checking out the sandbox or request a trial account to try Instana for free with your workloads.