Stan's Corner

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  • 1.  High Availability Architecture for Instana (On Prem)

    Posted Mon November 21, 2022 09:58 AM
    Hello everyone..

    We need few clarifications regarding the IBM Instana HA (on-prem setup).

    Below is the IBM Instana HA On-Prem documentation we are following for our implementation.

    https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/instana-observability/current?topic=premises-high-availability

    Based on the documentation link mentioned above we have proposed the following architecture design 



    Request you to kindly confirm the following based on the ON Prem design (Instana running on RHEL 8.4 VM on Docker CE) attached:

    1)How will the configuration changes sync between the two Instana backends? As per the current IBM architecture (on-prem), there is no common database between the two Instana backends.

    2)If the Primary Instana Backend is down, how we can make sure that the data (delta data) on both backends are in sync? Let's say the primary Instana backend is down for 2 hours and the agent is forwarding the data to the Instana Secondary backend. When the primary is back online, there is a 2 hours of data loss on the primary instance. How can we maintain the data resilience between the 2 instana backends.

    3)Is there a way to sync only the delta data from Secondary Instana Backend to Primary Instana Backend? There is a procedure for backup and restore and this is for complete data backup and restore.

    4) Based on the Architecture design can we configure the agent host (servers on which we will install instana agent) to point to the load balancer IP (Virtual IP) instead of defining the 2 instana backend IPs

    5) Can we install Instana (On-Prem) in distributed mode meaning a separate Database components on one server and Application components on another server? If so, can you please throw some light on the IBM documentation regarding the same?

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    Kushak Kain
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  • 2.  RE: High Availability Architecture for Instana (On Prem)

    Posted Mon November 21, 2022 11:56 AM
    Dear Kushak, thanks for using the community forum! Since the questions you're asking require a quite long answer I would invite you to reach out to me through email (jordy.mevissen@ibm.com) so myself or somebody from my team can discuss your needs and seeing what the best approach forward is. It's like so often in IT "it depends" on a lot of parameters and what you're trying to accomplish.

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    Jordy Mevissen
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  • 3.  RE: High Availability Architecture for Instana (On Prem)

    Posted Thu December 01, 2022 06:53 AM
    @Jordy Mevissen
    My clients have very similar requirements on the high availability of on-prem Instana.
    Can you share your thoughts on this ?
    Basically what Khak asked is what I'm going to ask :) 

    ​​​

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    Spencer Hsieh
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  • 4.  RE: High Availability Architecture for Instana (On Prem)

    Posted Fri December 02, 2022 01:29 AM
    Instana has the simplest active/active HA pattern: share nothing.
    So the agents have to report to 2 (or multiple) independent backends and the backends share nothing in between.

    Instana was a SaaS company and it may have become more complex when we're fully in to the enterprise world.
    I personally insist that a dedicated section of "reference architectures" should be drafted, aligned, and published officially to remove the potential confusion raised by the customers / Instana community.

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    Bright Zheng
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  • 5.  RE: High Availability Architecture for Instana (On Prem)

    IBM TechXchange Speaker
    Posted Fri December 02, 2022 02:49 PM
    Bright is correct regarding the documented HA configuration when using the single server self-hosted configurations.  But, there are other options.  A lot depends on your objectives for HA and DR.    

    As Jordy points out, there is not a simple answer to this question that can be answered quickly on a forum.  Better to get in touch with one or both of us to discuss.  You can reach out to me at bstern@us.ibm.com and maybe setup a call to discuss.

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    Ben Stern
    Executive IT Specialist / Monitoring and Analytics Best Practices and Technical Evangelist
    IBM
    Durham NC
    919-224-1593
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