IBM Instana Observability documentation makes it clear that, when integrating many IBM APM v8 agents with a single Instana Agent host, it is highly recommended to increase the JVM memory allocation of the Instana host agent. The official guidance is: "If integrating several hundred APM v8 agents with a single Instana host agent, make sure to increase the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) heap size on the Instana host agent, as the default settings may not suffice for the heightened metric ingestion and processing load." Without this adjustment, the host agent could experience memory pressure, leading to dropped metrics, agent restarts, or degraded ingestion. This step is essential for scaling and ensuring metric reliability in high-volume environments, as detailed in the agent performance tuning and scalability section of IBM’s documentation. Other options (A, B, D) do not address the resource requirements driven by metric collection at scale.

According to IBM Instana Observability (v1.0.307 and earlier), stanctl cluster backup is a built-in utility and command-line tool to back up system state and operational data from an Instana cluster. The verified procedure reads: "stanctl cluster backup saves configuration, operational state, and selected monitoring data into an archive file located in the current working directory." This archive is designed for disaster recovery and migration, containing all crucial files needed for restoring Instana to a consistent state. Disk snapshots (A) are separate and handled by storage appliances. Option B describes pre-backup preparation rather than the actual result. Remote backup (C) operations require remote execution configuration and are not part of the default cluster backup. Thus, D is correct as per documentation, which emphasizes bringing together all cluster backup data in a portable .tar or .zip archive for safe storage or transfer.

Latency is one of the four principal Golden Signals monitored in Instana and critical for measuring system performance and user experience. According to IBM Instana Observability documentation: "Latency is the time it takes to handle or service a request, measured as the duration between request start and response end." This applies regardless of protocol (HTTP, RPC, messaging, etc.) and is used to evaluate whether services are fast or slow under real load. Instana automatically tracks latency for every transaction, as shown in traces and metrics: this enables teams to identify slow services, resource contention, and downstream delays. Golden Signals (latency, error rate, traffic, saturation) provide a universal framework recognized in both SRE and performance engineering disciplines. The actual duration a user spends logging in or opening a webpage may be an instance of latency, but Instana’s definition is generalized to any service request (API, DB, etc.), not just interactive browser events. Error count is monitored separately (error signal).

According to IBM Instana documentation, access rights for users belonging to multiple groups are resolved by applying the most restrictive role. The documentation states: "If a user belongs to more than one group, the permissions are set according to the order: No access > Limited access > Access all. If there’s a conflict, 'No access' always takes precedence, followed by 'Limited access,' then 'Access all.'" This ensures that users do not gain unintended permissions due to overlapping group assignments and supports the principle of least privilege. This behavior is critical for security compliance and consistent access control, especially in regulated environments or where different teams have varying visibility requirements. By enforcing the strictest restriction, Instana reduces risk from misconfigurations and accidental escalation of privilege, and helps satisfy audit trail and governance requirements in enterprise use cases.

IBM Instana agents use HTTPS, the industry standard secure protocol, to transmit telemetry data to Instana’s backend servers or clusters. Instana documentation says: "All agent-to-backend traffic is encrypted and transmitted via HTTPS, meeting data confidentiality and compliance requirements." The use of HTTPS prevents unauthorized data interception by using strong TLS encryption on every packet exchanged between agent and backend, regardless of whether the deployment is on-premises or SaaS. FTP, SSH, and NFS are protocols for file transfer, system access, or storage mounting but are never used for telemetry transmission in Instana's architecture. Secure HTTP is essential for privacy by design, is policy-enforced, and supports audit-friendly observability in all supported Instana versions per IBM standards.

IBM Instana Observability agents useLog4j2as their primary logging framework for system activity, sensor status, and diagnostic output. The documentation confirms: "The default logging framework for Instana agents is Apache Log4j2, providing structured log output, multi-level verbosity, and integration with most enterprise log aggregation environments." Log4j2 is a standard for Java-based environments, supporting dynamic log rotation, filtering, and formatting. Instana agent log files follow Log4j2 conventions, enabling easy parsing by SIEM tools and adapters. Serilog (A) is a .NET framework, not used by Instana agents. JSNLog (C) is for JavaScript applications, while Loggly (D) is a SaaS log analytics platform. Log4j2’s mature design lets administrators tune performance, verbosity, and log destinations in rich deployment scenarios, directly aligning with best practices in Instana’s monitoring ecosystem. This was reconfirmed in agent reference guides and environment setup sections.

According to the official IBM Instana Observability documentation (v1.0.304), retention policy settings in Custom Edition are NOT configured in a custom resource called "StorageConf." Instead, they are configured as properties within the CoreSpec of the Core custom resource. The documentation explicitly states: "Overwriting the default retention settings is optional and should only be done consciously. These retention setting values are configured as properties in the CoreSpec." The actual configuration looks like this:

text

kind: Core

metadata:

name: instana-core

namespace: instana-core

spec:

properties:

- name: retention.metrics.rollup5

value: "86400"

- name: config.appdata.shortterm.retention.days

value: "7"

- name: config.synthetics.retention.days

value: "60"

The retention policies for infrastructure metrics, application data, and synthetic monitoring are all configured as properties within the Core spec, not in a separate "StorageConf" custom resource. "StorageConf" refers to storage configurations for raw spans (S3, GCS, Azure), not retention policies.