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Integrating IBM Monitoring products with IBM Observability by Instana

By Karen Gdaniec posted Wed April 06, 2022 12:00 PM

  
Video demo by:  John Gbruoski @jgbruosk 729E


Summary

You can take advantage of IBM Observability by Instana using existing monitoring agents

As an IBM Monitoring client, are you excited about using IBM Observability by Instana to monitor your environments but worried that it will mean "rip and replace" of your existing monitoring agents?  Well, no need to worry any more!  The IBM-Instana team has built integration support for existing IBM monitoring products with Observability by Instana that allows you to continue to use your existing IBM Tivoli Monitoring (ITM), IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager (ITCAM) and Application Performance Monitoring V8 (APM V8) ensuring that your adoption of IBM Observability by Instana will be smooth and simple.

What is this integration support?

The integration support between IBM monitoring products and Instana 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 are 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 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.
   
                                                                                                                                      
Component diagram for the solution


  • the IBM APM V8 Integration support also provides server to server transformation services for APM V8 agents; using this mode, metrics from APM V8 agents can be viewed on both the Instana UI and the APM V8 UI.

As an IBM monitoring customer, why should I care?


Advantages offered by the Instana capabilities:
  • 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 Instana
  • Single pane of glass that combines Native Instana sensors and ITM/APM Agents if you are transitioning to Instana or want a hybrid solution
  • Allows you to decommission your ITM or APM Monitoring server, keeping only the agents

The IBM monitoring integration support enables a smooth migration from IBM monitoring to Instana.  In some scenarios, you can send collected metrics to Instana and your IBM monitoring product simultaneously.  This allows you to preserve existing events and also benefit from Instana's 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 is not included in the transform service.  Many ITCAM for Transactions clients are looking for a better APM solution.  Instana provides rich transactional support using modern tracking technologies and including 100% transaction capture.  So consider using Instana agents for your transactional tracing needs.

You can combine the capabilities of Instana and your IBM monitoring product to get the best monitoring solution for your environment.

This 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 are 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: 

Wait a minute...

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

How can I find out more, see a demo or get a trial?

Check out this short video demonstrating the integration of IBM Monitoring metrics with Instana.  Additionally, you can check out IBM Observability by Instana by taking the guided tour, or request a trial account to try Instana for free with your own workloads. 

#Instana
#Integration
#APM
#monitoring
#ITM
#ITCAM
#howto
#How-toVideos
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