Instana

Introduction

Instana is an APM solution built for microservices that enables IT Ops to build applications faster and deliver higher quality services by automating monitoring, tracing and root cause analysis. The solution is optimized for Kubernetes and OpenShift.

Instana Agent Operator

This repository contains the Kubernetes Operator to install and manage the Instana agent.

Installing

There are two ways to install the operator:

• Creating the required resources manually
• Using the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM)

Configuration

This documentation section describes configuration options you can set via the Instana Agent CRD and environment variables.

Contributing

Please see the guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Local Development

Prerequisites:

• Make (Makefile used as a utility CMD )
• Go (for the supported version, see the go.mod-file)
• Kubernetes
• Minikube
• Operator SDK
• Something like Docker or Podman
• Instana Agent key

Developing (and running) the Operator is easiest in two ways:

Option 1: Running Go Operator locally against a Minikube cluster

1. Start minikube (minikube docs)

   [!NOTE] When minikube runs on docker (at least on RHEL 8), there are network issues for pods reaching the internet. This causes connection issues for the agent and will prevent auto-updates or connections to the backend. To avoid this, use kvm2 driver instead: minikube start --driver=kvm2. If one is using podman, don't forget to create the minikube with the podman driver: minikube start --driver=podman. More info and options can be found in Minikube documentation about podman

   minikube start

2. Install the CRD by running make install at the root of the repository

   # Install command in root of the repository (installs custom resource to k8s)
   make install
   # List CRD to verify it appears in the list
   kubectl get crd

3. Create instana-agent namespace on the cluster:

   kubectl apply -f config/samples/instana_agent_namespace.yaml
   # List namespaces to verify it appears in the list
   kubectl get ns -n instana-agent

4. Run the instana-agent-operator Go application, either from your IDE, or from command-line: make run.

   # Starts the operator using make with additional fmt vet gen functionality
   make run

5. Duplicate agent sample file in config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent.yaml

   [!NOTE] for this demonstration the duplicate will be named as instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml

   # Copy/Duplicate the sample file with a "demo" suffix
   cp config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent.yaml config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml

6. Change the placeholder values in the duplicated file to your preferred values e.g. the Agent key, endpointHost and endpointPort

   [!TIP] In the configuration, there is a field spec.zone.name. Changing this to something more identifiable and personalised will help you find your infrastructure easier in the frontend-client.

7. Deploy the custom resource earlier created using

   kubectl apply -f config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml

   Verify that the operator reacted to the application of the yaml file by looking into the logs of the running operator

8. Depending on your local configurations, the environment should appear IBM Instana infrastructure-page. Standard minikube configuration should appear there as minikube.

To stop, take the following actions:

# Remove the instance from your kubernetes instance
kubectl delete -f config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml
# Final cleanup e.g `kubectl delete -k config/crd`
make uninstall
# Will stop the service
minikube start
# Will reset the whole set-up
minikube delete

Option 2: Running Deployment inside the cluster

The Instana Agent Operator can be developed and tested easily against a local Minikube cluster or any other configured Kubernetes cluster. Therefore, follow the below steps:

1. Create a copy of the file config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent.yaml, for the below steps we're assuming config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml
2. In this file, put correct values for e.g. the Agent key, endpointHost and endpointPort.
3. Build the Operator image: make docker-build
4. For deploying on Minikube, there's a convenient target make deploy-minikube. For any other environment you would need to first push the Docker image to a valid repository using make docker-push, then do the deployment using make deploy to deploy the Operator to the cluster configured for kubectl.
5. Deploy the custom resource earlier created using kubectl apply -f config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml

Now you should have a successful running Operator. To remove the Operator again, run:

• kubectl delete -f config/samples/instana_v1_instanaagent_demo.yaml
• make undeploy.