Skip to Main Content
Cloud Management and AIOps


This is an IBM Automation portal for Cloud Management, Technology Cost Management, Network Automation and AIOps products. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).

Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.

Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Future consideration
Workspace Instana
Categories Kubernetes
Created by Guest
Created on Apr 9, 2024

k8sensor needs to support multiple backends

When using Instana, most of our customers require high availability.  They assume that our SaaS operations are highly available based on our SLAs.   But, when customers deploy self-hosted environments they need to set things up in an HA configuration.   While it is technically possible to setup a kubernetes environment with multiple zones and rely on kubernetes to replicate, it is practically impossible in most customer environments due to latency requirements.  In addition, docker and our new Standard Edition don't have HA configurations.

The only way to achieve HA is for the Instana Agents and sensors to be configured with multiple back-ends.   For most sensors, that's no problem because the sensor sends its data to the local Agent.   But, the k8sensor is different.  It sends data directly to the Instana servesr.   Therefore, it needs a configuration option to support multiple back-ends.    

Today, it is possible to set it up with multiple instances of the k8sensor running.  But, that is VERY inefficient.  It means that two different sensor instances are gathering ALL of the kubernetes performance and configuration data for the entire cluster.  Customers want solutions with low overhead.  

Finally, it would be much better if the k8sensor picked up its configuration from the Host Agent.   I configure the Host Agent to use multiple backends.  I can do this via the helm install or by editing the instana-agent configmap.   But, the k8sensor does not pickup and use this additional configuration.   It makes no sense for a customer to configure this information twice.

Idea priority Low