Introducing the SAP Business Technology Platform
The SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) is a technological innovation platform designed for SAP applications to combine data and analytics, AI, application development, automation, and integration into a single, cohesive ecosystem.
BTP is SAP’s integration and application development platform for SAP clients, who want to extend their S/4 system. It is based on Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes technologies.
We also recommend to read the full article in the SAP Community blog site.
What is IBM Instana and how does it relate to observability?
IBM Instana™ Observability is a powerful solution for incident prevention and observability in the dynamic and complex realm of cloud environments. Instana Observability outperforms traditional application performance monitoring (APM) tools with one- second granularity and notifications delivered within three seconds. This solution extends observability to a wide range of roles, including DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, ITOps, and development. The solution gives users contextual information so that they can quickly access insights without struggling with data and application monitoring.
The key components of Instana are host agents and agent sensors deployed on platforms like IBM Cloud, AWS, and Azure. The components gather, consolidate, and transmit detailed monitoring data to the Instana backend.
Key features of IBM Instana Observability
· Comprehensive observability
· Intelligent automation
· Swift remediation and security
· Enhanced performance and user experience
You can find out more about the benefits of IBM Instana here.
Why SAP BTP + IBM Instana?
Real-time monitoring is vital for SAP BTP cloud-native applications. IBM Instana helps to ensure proactive issue detection, performance optimization, scalability, efficient incident response, and adherence to security and compliance requirements for SAP BTP cloud-native applications.
Supported Cloud Platforms with IBM Instana
IBM Instana supports IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure, and SAP. You can find a complete list of supported technologies for IBM Instana on this page.
Currently, Instana supports SAP BTP Kyma cluster monitoring. The BTP Cloud Foundry monitoring will be available in a future release.
Overview of IBM Instana and its capabilities in the SAP BTP environment
IBM Instana provides real-time monitoring and observability for SAP BTP applications. Key capabilities include:
· Full-stack observability: Monitors the entire SAP BTP stack, including application performance, microservices, databases, and containers.
· Auto-discovery and dependency mapping: Automatically discovers and maps services and their interdependencies.
· Real-time performance monitoring: Monitors key metrics in real time to detect anomalies and optimize performance.
· AI-powered insights and root cause analysis: Uses AI to provide intelligent insights and identify root causes of performance issues.
· Integration and extensibility: Integrates with other monitoring tools and supports a wide range of technologies.
· Automation and remediation: Offers smart alerts, automatic event correlation, and proactive issue resolution.
Exploring the concept of SAP BTP cloud-native applications with Instana
SAP BTP cloud-native applications, built using cloud-native principles like microservices architecture and DevOps practices, incorporate Java Spring Boot frameworks and use HTTP clients for seamless integration with external services. These applications use cloud services, container orchestration, and prioritize scalability and resilience. See the below diagram for the reference:
The Instana Agent is installed within the SAP BTP account, enabling monitoring of various applications such as node.js, Python, Java Spring Boot, and even the S/4 HANA Cloud Database. Instana effectively monitors these microservices applications, providing visibility into their output and facilitating monitoring through the Instana Dashboard.
SAP BTP Kyma
SAP BTP's Kyma runtime is a managed Kubernetes runtime that uses the open-source project Kyma. This cloud-native approach offers several benefits, including improved flexibility, scalability, and cost effectiveness. Kyma's modular design enables users to select and customize modules based on their specific business needs. Modules can be enabled or disabled as required, giving users control over the infrastructure expenses associated with their chosen modules.
Kyma and Docker simplify application deployment. A JAR/TAR file is generated after the compilation of the SAP BTP Cloud application. This file is then used to create a Docker image using a Dockerfile. The compiled version of the application is included in the Docker image, which is then pushed to a Kubernetes cluster. Consequently, the BTP application is deployed and operational within the cluster.
Challenges and risks associated with lack of real-time monitoring
Real-time monitoring in SAP BTP lets users harness the power of proactive detection and transform their operations, eliminating problems related to sluggish performance, downtime, and troubleshooting errors.
Real-time monitoring provides for a much-improved user experience, supporting swift action against performance degradation and prompt resolution of issues. Downtime is significantly reduced, and incidents can be resolved before they have a chance to escalate.
In addition, real-time monitoring helps to comply with SLAs, reduce risks and safeguard your operations. Resource allocation can then be managed by optimizing efficiency and eliminating waste.
Key functionalities of IBM Instana for SAP BTP environment
· Real-time visibility: Instant insights into the performance and health of your SAP BTP applications becomes possible. IBM Instana delivers real-time visibility, ensuring you stay ahead of any performance issues
· Automated full-stack monitoring: Inefficient, unproductive manual monitoring can be halted. With IBM Instana, you enjoy automated full-stack monitoring, from application performance to infrastructure, microservices, Kubernetes, databases, APIs, and beyond.
· Realize full potential: Cloud-native applications can be optimized as IBM Instana provides you with actionable insights to optimize performance, enhance the user experience, and drive business success.
· Automation and AI-powered solutions: Use watsonx automation and AI to predict and resolve issues, enhance accuracy and increase operational efficiency. Read more about watsonx here.
Current offerings by SAP BTP vs. offerings by IBM Instana
CPU utilization
Instana enables real-time CPU utilization monitoring, allowing you to track and optimize the use of processing resources in your application. You can ensure optimal resource allocation and discover any irregularities or spikes that may impair performance by analyzing CPU utilization.
Memory utilization
By giving you access to memory usage data, Instana enables you to keep an eye on how much memory your application is using. You may find memory leaks, improve memory allocation, and avoid out-of-memory issues, which can have an impact on your application's stability and speed, by monitoring memory utilization.
SQL traces
SQL tracing is not natively supported by SAP BTP Kyma. It requires the use of third-party performance monitoring tools, databases with built-in SQL tracing capabilities, log4j logging frameworks, and so on.
However, IBM Instana can support SQL tracing.
Instana offers SQL traces, which capture and analyze the database queries executed by your application. By examining SQL traces, you can identify slow queries, optimize database interactions, and enhance overall database performance.
We recommend the following IBM Instana documentation for the installation of the Instana Agent to the SAP BTP Kyma Cluster.
Conclusion
IBM Instana provides real-time analytics, a crucial technology that enhances the functioning of SAP BTP's cloud-native applications. By utilizing advanced analytics and AI, Instana enables real-time monitoring, proactive issue diagnosis, and speedy performance optimization.
Organizations can function at higher levels of efficiency thanks to effective system complexity management. While preserving a superior user experience, Instana quickly locates and eliminates bottlenecks across the application landscape and architecture. And it can support SAP BTP's traditional monitoring techniques and get avoid common bottlenecks, including those caused by memory usage, CPU utilization, SQL tracing, and other issues. IBM Instana is a comprehensive monitoring solution for SAP BTP's cloud-native applications.
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