Administering Environments with IBM Instana Observability

Course Overview

In this course, you learn how to perform observability and application performance monitoring functions using IBM Instana Observability. You learn the architecture of Instana and how the data flows from the sensors and tracers, through the agents, and to the big data backend. You learn essential user interface techniques and how to create application perspectives and to use their dashboards to monitor the services. In addition, this course describes distributed tracing and how IBM Instana AutoTrace works and how to quickly trace issues down to the root cause. You also learn how the differences between changes, issues, and incidents and how to create alerts to notify team members when certain criteria is met. You experiment with establishing roles for users with group permissions. And you learn how to create custom dashboards to help you keep track of the things for which you are responsible.

Target Audience

This course is designed for those who need to know what Instana is capable of doing for their enterprise, for those who need to maintain the stability and uptime of their applications, and for those who are interested in optimizing performance and response times and user experiences.

Course Objectives

• Describe the purpose of IBM Instana Observability and why it is needed
• Check to ensure that all the services are enabled and running
• Use Instana user interface features and dashboards
• Navigate the Infrastructure map, perform Dynamic Focus Queries, and compare services using the Comparison table
• Create application perspectives and analyze services and endpoints
• Track down issues to the root cause using the dashboards, analytics, and tracing features
• Use incidents, issues, and changes to help observe a system
• Create custom events, alert channels, and alerts
• Configure Smart Alerts and Custom Payloads
• Manage user roles using group permissions
• Create custom dashboards 

Course Content

• Course introduction
• Unit 1. Essentials of IBM Instana Observability
• Exercise 1. Introduction to IBM Instana Observability
• Unit 2. Introduction to IBM Instana Observability
• Exercise 2. Introduction To Instana
• Unit 3. Infrastructure view and Dynamic Focus Query
• Exercise 3. Infrastructure View and Dynamic Focus Queries
• Unit 4. Applications and Services
• Exercise 4. Applications and Services
• Unit 5. Analytics and Tracing
• Exercise 5. Analytics and Tracing
• Unit 6. Events and Alerts
• Exercise 6. Events and Alerts
• Unit 7. Users and Groups
• Exercise 7. Users and Groups
• Unit 8. Custom Dashboards
• Exercise 8. Custom Dashboards
• Course summary

Course Prerequisites

• Fundamental understanding of distributed applications
• Knowledge of Linux a plus