2020-03-30

Self-hosted Release Notes

Minimum version to update directly: Build 193

Self-hosted announcements

In two releases #201 we will release a bigger migration that will be executed in the background as we are retiring ElasticSearch 2 and migrating to ElasticSearch 7. We anticipate no deviations from the standard update procedure.

Cumulative Features from Release #196, #197

IBM Watson AIOPS Alert Channel Integration

It is now possible to use IBM Watson AIOps as an alert channel for Instana alert notifications (see documentation).

IBM DataPower (Technology Preview)

Instana now supports monitoring of IBM DataPower. This includes a built-in dashboard that displays key metrics and health events. For more information, refer to the IBM DataPower docs.

IBM App Connect Enterprise (Technology Preview)

Instana now supports monitoring of IBM App Connect Enterprise. This includes a built-in dashboard that displays key metrics and health events. For more information, refer to the IBM App Connect Enterprise docs.

IBM Cloud Platform (Technology Preview)

With this release, we have added support for the following IBM Cloud Platform services:

• IBM Load Balancer (classic)
• IBM Cloud Object Storage
• IBM Cloud Functions
• IBM Cloud Databases for etcd
• IBM Cloudant
• VPC virtual server instances

For more information, refer to the IBM Cloud Platform docs.

IBM APM V8 (Technology Preview)

From this release Instana provides monitoring of IBM APM V8. For more information, refer to the IBM APM V8 docs.

Sensor enhancements

• Node.js

  • Added instrumentation for AWS S3
  • Added instrumentation for AWS DynamoDB

• Ruby:

  • Added support for W3 Trace Context / OpenTelemetry
  • Added instrumentation for Dnyamodb

• .NET Core

  • Added support for W3 Trace Context / OpenTelemetry

• AWS Sensor:

  • Added support for AWS Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK)
  • Added support for including/excluding untagged AWS resources. Untagged resources will still be monitored out of box, but there is an option to disable it now.

• ClickHouse Sensor:

  • ClickHouse server version is displayed in the sidebar

Custom Dashboard: Ability to share max values between multiple Y axes

With this release, we have added a toggle in the axes configurator section of the custom dashboard. The toggle will be visible only when the user adds a secondary Y-axis.

With this toggle, you can set a common max value between both the Y axes. If the user hasn't manually set a max-value in the input field, the value will be calculated automatically using the data.

New Unbounded Analytics

Unbounded Analytics is even easier and more powerful to use.

• In addition to the AND operator, Unbounded Analytics now supports OR operator and brackets to build more complex queries.
• Discovery of tags becomes easier thanks to the new tag catalog which groups tags under different categories with search capability. (e.g. Calls, Databases, Kubernetes, Technology etc).
• A new chart selector allows visualizing a chart independently of selected metrics.
• The quick filter bar has been replaced by a faceted search menu on the left of the page. It allows drilling down into your data by adding some frequently used filters quickly. In Analyze Traces and Calls, synthetic and internal calls can be included in the result by toggling the Hidden Calls checkboxes.
• You can peak into the results of each group without switching to a new page.
• The JSON payload of the tag filter expression is generated and can be copied from the UI to query our API or to use in the Grafana plugin.

All the above mentioned changes have been made consistent across Analyze Applications, Websites and Mobile Apps, except Analyze Traces which does not support OR operator yet.

In Analyze Traces & Calls, include_synthetic and include_internal tags have been replaced by 2 check boxes in the Hidden Calls section of the facated search menu.

Configure Application Perspective with new query builder

You can now configure an Application Perspective with the same query builder as in Unbounded Analytics and benefit from the new OR logic operator and the brackets.

There is one change in whether a call should be included in an Application Perspective when the filter uses a negative operator.

For example, an Application Perspective is configured with call.http.host != localhost. Before this release, a call which does not have value in call.http.host tag such as a database call did not match the filter and was not included in this Application Perspective. From this release, such call without call.http.host value will match the filter. This new behavior is consistent with filtering calls in Analytics.

You can add call.http.host is present to the configuration to get the same behavior as in the past. We will keep the backward compatibility of the existing Application Perspectives for a few releases. All newly created or updated Application Perspective will use the new logic.

Improved cloud managed database service mapping and infrastructure linking

• Calls to all DynamoDB instances are grouped under "DynamoDB" service. The endpoint name is the DynamoDB table name.
• Calls to all AWS S3 buckets are grouped under "AWS S3" service. The endpoint name is the bucket name. Support infra linking of calls to AWS S3 using SDK or web service.
• Calls to all Google Cloud Storage buckets are grouped under "Google Cloud Storage" service. The endpoint name is the bucket name. Support infra linking of calls to Google Cloud Storage using SDK or web service.
• AWS RDS service will be named after the cluster name if exists.
• Ruby: Calls to the AWS services SQS, SNS and S3 are now recorded by the instana gem
• Ruby: We now support shoryuken in the instana gem. Trace continuity will be maintained for SQS messages that contain Instana message headers.
• Ruby: Query parameters are now filerable for Net::HTTP and Excon in the analytics view.

• .NET Full Framework

  • Added support for W3 Trace Context / OpenTelemetry

Other Features

• Go: as of v1.27.0 Instana Go sensor correlates calls from OpenTelemetry-instrumented processes into the same trace.
• Events View: The number of the total matching events is shown in the events list side bar.

Fixes

• C++ Sensor 1.1.1: Fixed the NGINX secrets handling.
• MySQL: Fixed missing MySQL schemas
• Kubernetes: Fixed key for namespace labels list, namespace annotations list and cluster debug information

Deprecations

• The tagFilters parameter has been marked as deprecated in our HTTP APIs in favor of tagFilterExpression to enable more complex queries with boolean logic. Please check out the Instana API docs for more details.