IBM is pleased to announce the new release of IBM Observability by Instana APM — version 1.0.203, for both on-premises and Software as a Service — is available as of June 29, 2021.

This release expands the coverage of the IBM Observability by Instana APM platform and automated Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solution, designed specifically for the challenges of managing microservices and cloud-native applications. This latest release delivers enhancements and additional coverage from what was delivered with version 1.0.197 for traditional IBM customers. This new release leverages prior investments in IBM middleware and brings visibility into the observability platform. 

Several features are released as Technology Preview, which gives users early views of the capabilities we intend to deliver in future releases. We include the Technology Preview capabilities and look forward to your feedback to make sure we are meeting your needs and addressing the challenges you need to tackle.

Main themes driving content for IBM customers in this new release

Help customers get more value: Features already in the Instana offering are now side by side with new features proposed to extend the monitoring capabilities supporting IBM-specific items, such as the following:

• IBM i and Db2 on i monitoring: Instana now supports remote monitoring of multiple IBM i instances. The monitored IBM i instance will be displayed as a tower on your Infrastructure Map, and the Db2 on i will be presented as a running process within the tower. OS-related metrics are collected from various system tables, and the database-related metrics are collected using the built-in IBM i Collection Services. The supported versions are 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4, which includes the following:
  • IBM i OS level metrics: A built-in dashboard that displays system and memory pool metrics. For more information, refer to the IBM i docs.
  • Db2 on i: A built-in dashboard that displays Active Queries, various Operations, Plan Cache and SQL Cursor metrics. For more information, refer to the Db2 on i docs.
• IBM APM V8 integration support: Initially released as a Technology Preview, this is now released as a fully supported feature. Supported V8 agents attached to an APM V8 server can be integrated with the Instana server. Metrics and identity information from the APM V8 agents is forwarded to the Instana server. Host, process and IBM Datapower entities and metrics will appear on the Infrastructure map. This capability allows Instana to ingest IBM APM V8 generated metrics to preserve customers’ investments and allow them to leverage and exploit the full set of powerful native Instana features. For more information, refer to the IBM APM V8 docs. Supported V8 agents are as follows:
  • Linux OS
  • Window OS
  • Unix OS on AIX
  • IBM Datapower
• IBM MQ tracing support (Technology Preview): Instana now supports tracing IBM MQ messages on x86 architecture. For more information, refer to the IBM MQ docs.
• IBM Z HMC monitoring (Technology Preview): Instana now supports remote monitoring of zHMC. This includes a built-in dashboard that displays key metrics. For more information, refer to the IBM Z HMC docs.
• Installation of Instana Host Agent on Red Hat OpenShift:
  • Installing the host agents was tested following all three modes of install — Helm, YAML and Operator-based install.
  • Agents have been validated and tested with the following OpenShift configurations:
    • OpenShift 4.3 and above on x86 architecture
    • OpenShift 4.7 and above on IBM Z and LinuxONE
• Agents to monitor sample microservices applications (robot-shop) that have been built using the below technologies were validated and tested on OpenShift (running on both x86 architecture and IBM Z and LinuxONE platforms)
  • NodeJS (Express)
  • Java (Spring Boot)
  • Python (Flask)
  • Golang
  • PHP (Apache)
  • MongoDB
  • Redis
  • MySQL (Maxmind data)
  • RabbitMQ
  • Nginx
  • AngularJS (1.x)
• Sensor and Agent enhancements:
  • WebSphere Application:
    • Added EJB metrics ResponseTime and ResponseCount
    • Added session manager metrics CreateCount and InvalidateCount
    • Added thread pool metrics ConcurrentHungThreadCount and DeclaredThreadHungCount
  • IBM Db2 v 11.5 LUW containerised version with agents running on Linux VMs: Supported on Linux on x86_64, Linux on Power, IBM Z and LinuxONE
    • Added various metrics related to Top queries, Lock wait, Agent status, DBM Config usage, workload and UOW as metrics collections
    • Added detailed table views for DB & DBM configurations, Top queries, Lock wait, Top Total CPU, Log Disk Wait, Runstats and Diag Log entries
    • With Agent 1.1.602, it’s possible to set mode.web-override.allowed = false in the file <agent-installation>/etc/instana/com.instana.agent.main.config.Agent.cfg to disable the possibility of overriding the Agent Mode directly from the Instana UI

Localization: Globalization and online doc translation are now fully enabled in the offering. Customers will be able to interact with the offering in their native language to ensure a better user experience. You can now inspect the Instana product in nine additional languages that can be configured within the product’s general user settings. With the 1.0.203 release, the following languages are now supported:

• Chinese (China)
• Chinese (Taiwan)
• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Spanish

Trace logs for Unbounded Analytics (beta): We are excited to announce that Logs has joined the Unbounded Analytics family! You can now explore WARN and ERROR Trace Logs outside the context of a Call or Trace. While the feature is in beta, please provide us your valuable feedback by raising a support ticket in the Instana Support portal:

Additional features added in this release:

• Support for AWS SDK Lambda Invoke call
• IBM Cloud Platform sensor added support for IBM Cloud Container Registry, IBM Cloud Schematics and IBM VPN for VPC
• Invoking AWS Lambda functions via the AWS SDK (Lambda#invoke, Lambda#invokeAsync) is now captured and also correlated into the trace for Go and Node.js
• AWS Lambda executions that are cold starts are now marked as such in unbounded analytics (for Node.js based Lambdas, other runtimes will follow)
• Imminent timeouts of AWS Lambda functions are detected and shown as such in unbounded analytics (for Node.js based Lambdas, other runtimes will follow)

The following improvements have been implemented:

• .Net Core Tracer: Added support for AWS SDK S3 version 3.7.
• OpenTelemetry: Improved discoverability of tags in Unbounded Analytics.
• Java Trace Sensor: Added support for WebSphere EJB tracing.
• Go Sensor: Versions v1.30.0 and instrumentation/instagin/v1.0.0 were released. Support for Gin framework was added.
• Instana Trace SDK: The span duration can now be overwritten using the duration tag (in milliseconds).

Additional features, improvements, and fixes were made to the enterprise observability platform and automated Application Performance Monitoring solution since the version 197 release:

• https://www.instana.com/docs/releases/notes/build_198/
• https://www.instana.com/docs/releases/notes/build_199/
• https://www.instana.com/docs/releases/notes/build_200/
• https://www.instana.com/docs/releases/notes/build_201/
• https://www.instana.com/docs/releases/notes/build_202/

Additional links

• IBM Observability by Instana APM
• Overview of the offering
• Instana documentation