VMware Tanzu (PCF) Monitoring

Monitoring VMware Tanzu (PCF) for Application Performance

Monitoring VMware Tanzu (formerly Pivotal Cloud Foundry) based microservice applications requires visibility at every layer of your application stack. Instana automates the entire process of managing containerized applications, including automatic discovery of all application components, platforms, containers, and services. Once installed into a Tanzu foundation, Instana will automatically discover all Diego Cells and Garden containers, deploy monitoring sensors for each application component, map the application dependencies, and begin monitoring full stack application performance – usually with zero effort on your part.

Introduction to VMware Tanzu

According to the VMware Tanzu website, Tanzu is the unified, multi-cloud platform to run enterprise applications. Tanzu enables you to deliver custom software on a secure, reliable platform and transform how your enterprise does business. Tanzu’s various parts work together to orchestrate an entire microservices environment. Tanzu Cloud Controller directs the Diego Brain to coordinate individual Diego cells and initiate the process of building, staging, and running the application.

Managing VMware Tanzu Microservice Application Performance with Instana

The Instana agent is packaged for Tanzu as a Tile that provides automation in deploying and managing the Instana Agent across an entire Tanzu foundation. The Instana tile is integrated into the Tanzu provisioning mechanisms. When a new VM is spawned or a new service is provisioned, the Instana Agent is automatically installed on it. When deployed into a foundation, Instana automatically provides visibility at the container, infrastructure, and application level, organizing data into context rich dependency relationships with its Dynamic Graph backend model. The Instana Agent provides:

Automatic and continuous discovery – a single, lightweight agent per foundation continually discovers all components and deploys the appropriate sensors for each technology. These sensors collect configuration, changes, metrics, and events.

Automatic dependency mapping – All application and service components are organized into dependency maps to understand their relational interdependencies. Every discovered component is mapped and its metric data, configuration, dependencies, and component health are captured.



Immediate visibility – As new code moves through your CI/CD pipelines, Instana immediately provides visibility and performance feedback. Instana automatically traces every application request flowing through your foundation and pulls together each distributed trace for a full, end-to-end view. This ensures you’ll always have a complete data set to see the exact impact of every deployment.

Exact Root Cause Determination – Instana delivers full analysis of every user impact, performed automatically. Instana detects any anomalies, correlates metrics, traces, exceptions, logged errors, and configuration data based on application and service dependencies, providing exact root cause analysis in seconds.



With Instana’s automatic and continuous discovery, dependency mapping, metric monitoring, distributed tracing, anomaly detection, and analytics across the complete data set, you’ll always know what is happening within your Tanzu foundation. Instana’s immediate, exact understanding of quality enables you to deliver better quality software, faster.

Tanzu Tile Installation: Getting Started

To get started you’ll need an Instana Account. If you already have an account, follow the Tanzu installation instructions below. If not, you can still see how the Instana Microservices Application Monitoring for Tanzu tile works in action with a free trial account. Simply sign up for a free trial of Instana today and then follow the installation instructions below. Installing Instana Microservices Application Monitoring Tile in OpsManager

1. Download the product file from VMware Tanzu Network
2. Navigate to the OpsManager Installation Dashboard and click ‘Import a Product’ to upload the product file
3. Under the ‘Import a Product’ button, click ‘next version number of Instana Microservices Application Monitoring’. This adds the tile to your staging area
4. Click the newly added ‘Instana Microservices Application Monitoring tile’
5. The Instana Agent requires minimal configuration:
   1. Where is the Instana backend?
   2. What is your agent key
6. Save the configuration
7. The Instana tile will now be a ‘pending change’ in OpsManager
8. Click ‘Apply Changes’ to roll out the Instana agent across your entire Tanzu foundation
9. Update the foundation to receive the Instana Agent