In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses increasingly adopt hybrid IT models, combining traditional on-premises applications with modern cloud-native microservices. This shift brings new challenges in managing and monitoring complex distributed systems. Enter Instana Self-Hosted on IBM Power Systems – a game-changing solution that promises to transform how we approach observability in enterprise environments.
The Need for Modern Observability
As applications become more complex and distributed, the need for a comprehensive observability solution has never been greater. Traditional monitoring tools often fail to provide the depth and breadth of insights required to manage modern, hybrid IT environments effectively. This is where Instana, a cutting-edge observability platform, comes into play.
Instana: A Next-Generation Observability Solution
Instana offers a range of features that make it an ideal choice for enterprises looking to gain deep insights into their IT infrastructure:
- Automatic Discovery and Monitoring: Instana automatically maps all services, applications, and infrastructure components, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
- Contextualised Tracing: With end-to-end request tracing, Instana provides deep insights into application performance and dependencies.
- Dynamic Thresholds and Alerting: Using machine learning, Instana sets dynamic thresholds and generates intelligent alerts, reducing false positives and ensuring timely issue detection.
- Real-Time Analytics: Instant analytics and insights help teams understand performance trends and quickly identify root causes of issues.
- Infrastructure Monitoring: Beyond applications, Instana provides detailed metrics for all infrastructure components, including servers, containers, and networks.
- Custom Dashboards: Teams can create tailored dashboards to meet specific business and technical requirements.
- Change Tracking: Instana tracks changes in application versions and configurations, making it easier to diagnose behaviour changes.
The Power of IBM Power Systems
While Instana is a powerful tool, running it on IBM Power Systems takes its capabilities to the next level. IBM Power Systems are renowned for their reliability, scalability, security, and performance. Here’s why this combination is a game-changer:
- High Performance: IBM Power processors, with their RISC architecture, offer faster processing for demanding workloads.
- Scalability: IBM PowerVM hypervisor allows on-demand CPU capacity, ensuring your observability solution can grow with your needs.
- Security: IBM Power Systems provides comprehensive security at every layer, with features like hardware-accelerated transparent memory encryption and quantum-safe cryptography.
- Cost Efficiency: IBM Power Systems offers a lower 3-year TCO than competing platforms, optimising your IT investments.
- Optimised for Containerised Workloads: IBM Power Systems is ready for modern, containerised applications with the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform.
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Instana Self-Hosted on IBM Power: A Perfect Match
The combination of Instana Self-Hosted and IBM Power Systems offers unique advantages:
- Data Residency: All observability data can be stored locally on IBM Power platforms, which is crucial for security-sensitive industries.
- Efficient Administration: IBM Power administrators can manage Instana within their domain of expertise.
- Air-Gapped Installation: Air-gapped installations are possible for industries requiring the highest level of security.
- Scalability: Instana’s backend pods can easily scale using the OpenShift Container Platform, providing an elastic, scalable solution.
Real-World Applications
- Enterprise Applications: Monitor large-scale, hybrid applications undergoing cloud transformation.
- E-commerce Platforms: Gain real-time insights into transaction performance and user experience.
- Financial Services: Ensure high availability and performance of critical financial applications.
- IBM Middleware: Provide complete visibility into IBM systems like MQ, ACE, WebSphere, and Liberty.
- SAP S/4 HANA: Monitor these critical enterprise applications optimised for IBM Power Systems.
Conclusion
The integration of Instana Self-Hosted with IBM Power Systems represents a significant leap forward in observability solutions for enterprise environments. By combining Instana’s advanced observability features with the robust performance, security, and scalability of IBM Power Systems, businesses can gain unprecedented insights into their IT infrastructure. This powerful synergy enables organisations to optimise performance, enhance security, and drive efficiency across their entire IT landscape.
As we move further into the era of hybrid IT and application modernisation, solutions like Instana on IBM Power will be crucial in helping businesses navigate the complexities of modern infrastructure and application stacks. Embrace this innovative solution to stay ahead in the ever-evolving world of enterprise IT.
Further Information
The Observability for developers document discusses observability in software development, its importance, and how to achieve it:
Introduction:
- Observability addresses the challenge of troubleshooting complex, distributed software systems.
- Due to changes in software architecture and developer responsibilities, it evolved from simple error log browsing to more sophisticated approaches.
What is observability:
- Defined as visibility plus the understanding of what’s happening inside an application or system.
- Differs from traditional monitoring by allowing developers to answer unanticipated questions about system behavior.
Achieving full end-to-end observability:
- Requires monitoring the complete lifecycle of user requests.
- Involves collecting, processing, storing, and analyzing telemetry data.
- Key telemetry signals: traces, events, metrics, profiles, logs, and exceptions.
- Distributed tracing is highlighted as particularly important.
Observability standards and open source:
- OpenTelemetry project is establishing open standards for telemetry.
- Includes specifications, instrumentation tools, and pipeline tools.
SLO methodology:
- Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and Service Level Indicators (SLIs) are introduced as part of observability practices.
- Emphasises setting realistic targets rather than striving for perfection.
Beyond open source:
- While open-source tools provide a foundation, enterprise solutions like IBM Instana offer more comprehensive observability.
- Benefits include adaptability, dynamic service discovery, automatic instrumentation, and correlation of various metrics.
IBM Instana:
- Presented as an enterprise observability platform with automated application performance monitoring.
- Designed for complex, modern, cloud-native applications.
- Offers AI-powered discovery and visibility into development pipelines.
The above document concludes by promoting IBM Instana’s free trial and emphasising its benefits for businesses managing complex, modern applications.
The above document is a Total Economic Impact (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of IBM to assess the potential return on investment (ROI) for organisations deploying IBM Instana Observability. Key findings include:
- Return on Investment (ROI): 219%
- Net Present Value (NPV): $5.27 million
- Benefits Present Value (PV): $7.68 million
The study was based on interviews with seven representatives from four organisations using Instana Observability. A composite organisation was created based on these interviews, representing a company with 10,000 employees and $2 billion in annual revenue.
Key benefits of deploying Instana Observability include:
- Reduced revenue-impacting incidents by up to 60% and mean time to repair by 70%.
- Reduced business productivity-impacting incidents by up to 60% and mean time to repair by 70%.
- Decreased developer troubleshooting time by up to 90%.
- Operational productivity improvements of up to 40% for SRE and DevOps teams.
- Cost savings of $213,000 per year from retiring legacy tools and identifying underutilised resources.
Unquantified benefits included the ability to be more proactive, improved customer experience, and increased employee satisfaction.
The study also outlined the costs associated with Instana Observability, including license costs, implementation costs, and ongoing management costs.
Overall, the study concludes that IBM Instana Observability provides significant financial benefits and operational improvements for organisations deploying it as their observability solution.
Check out this blog by Sridhar Venkatesh
Credits
Nimesh Bhatia (nbhatia@ibm.com )
- Program Director, Instana Self-Hosted
Sridhar Venkatesh ( svenkatesh@us.ibm.com )
- Product Manager, Instana Enterprise Applications
- Product Management Hybrid Cloud, Power Systems
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