I thought that will be the case for you Rainer, with all the compliance and regulations your systems need to have a safe mechanism... the way to go is to create an idea and include all these details so it can be assessed by Instana's PMs and provide an estimated timeline to make it happen.
You can even share the idea here so more users are aware and vote for it.
Original Message:
Sent: Mon February 16, 2026 04:59 AM
From: Rainer Schuppe
Subject: Can the agent mode be changed via the REST API?
Hi Bart,
there is a compliance rule here (banking) that prohibits access to the internal GitHub (that runs in development) from production systems. Hence this doesn't work for us.
Also a mass update of files in production here goes through a deployment workflow which takes weeks and we need an emergency shutdown button ;-)
API whould be really nice, or a agent fleet management capability in the UI (which we know is pn the roadmap).
Regards,
Rainer
------------------------------
Rainer Schuppe Rainer Schuppe
Instana veteran (since 2016), APM oldtimer (since 2003 Wily, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Instana, OpenTelemetry)
https://observability-heroes.com
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: Mon February 16, 2026 02:38 AM
From: Bart Bogaerts
Subject: Can the agent mode be changed via the REST API?
Hi Rainer,
Just one thought: the mode is being written locally to the file /opt/instana/agent/etc/instana/com.instana.agent.main.config.Agent.cfg. Perhaps it could be an idea to do a mass update of this file using automation (ansible, script, or similar), or by managing the agents through a github repository?
------------------------------
Bart Bogaerts
Client Engineering - Technology Engineer
IBM Belgium
Brussels
Original Message:
Sent: Fri February 13, 2026 07:24 AM
From: Rainer Schuppe
Subject: Can the agent mode be changed via the REST API?
Hi Israel,
Thanks for confimring.
Actually you can get quite a bit more from the API - including the agent mode - together with the permission in the API token dialog it suggests that there is a way to change the mode. Though a POST call with a new "mode" value is accepted (status: 202) but doesn't do anything.
I filed an AHA request already for this, as we need some way to turn off a group of agents with a click or a command in case of emergencies (there'll a couple of 1000 agents here in play).
{
"data": {
"agentVersion": "2026.02.12.1058",
"boot": "1.2.31",
"capabilities": [
"gitops",
"logdownload",
"agentSupportInfo",
"agentprofiler",
"log4j-safe-lib"
],
"git": {
"commitHash": "66c77adceed68f7167817f0a5be89ef60b9669c1",
"commitMessage": "Let's go",
"initialized": true,
"present": true,
"remoteBranch": "master",
"remoteName": "configuration",
"remoteUri": "myurl"
},
"hasCpuLoad": true,
"hostname": "MyHostname",
"java": {
"version": "11.0.11",
"vmname": "OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM",
"vmvendor": "AdoptOpenJDK",
"vmversion": "11.0.11+9"
},
"log.counts.byMessage": {
"ERROR": "ERROR",
"WARN": "WARN"
},
"logAsRate": true,
"loglevel": "INFO",
"memory.nativeTotal": 134217728,
"memory.total": 164429824,
"metrics": true,
"mode": 2,
"origin": "ump",
"pid": "42603",
"startedAt": 1770975484774,
"updateMode": "Auto",
"user": "user"
},
"entityId": {
"host": "96:5a:fd:ff:fe:54:2f:51",
"pluginId": "com.instana.forge.infrastructure.application.instana.agent.InstanaAgent",
"steadyId": "self"
},
"from": 1770978270000,
"label": "Instana Agent @ hostname",
"plugin": "instanaAgent",
"snapshotId": "pXDWyYT998G1QqcV5yhJ4RJgVV0",
"tags": []
}
------------------------------
Rainer Schuppe Rainer Schuppe
Instana veteran (since 2016), APM oldtimer (since 2003 Wily, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Instana, OpenTelemetry)
https://observability-heroes.com
Original Message:
Sent: Fri February 13, 2026 07:10 AM
From: Israel Ochoa
Subject: Can the agent mode be changed via the REST API?
Hi Rainer,
That is not possible, if you go to the REST API and try to generate a sample body, you get something like this:
{
"remoteBranch": "ejzofarsomicab",
"remoteName": "Joel Abbott",
"remoteUri": "ezri"
}
Which will not help you at all :(
My suggestion is to create an idea if this is something that you really need to happen from the REST API.
Regards,
------------------------------
Israel Ochoa
CSM Architect - NCEE Market
IBM
Stockholm
Visit "IBM Instana - The Lost Docs" -> https://isreal8a.github.io/instana-docs