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This requirement is planned for consideration in the 1H of 2026.
Which time source should Instana compare against? (e.g., your internal NTP/Chrony servers, a public NTP service, or the Instana agent host itself?)
Local Chrony Deamon ( /usr/sbin/chronyd )
What level of time drift would you consider unacceptable for your workloads?
This should be a value gathered and showed in instana for a possible Alert to be put in place in the UI . Currently we set 1sec as our baseline in our workaround
Should this check be performed on all servers, or only on specific/critical ones?
All Servers that are using Chronyd [Linux]
Are you expecting just alerting, or would you also like to see historical drift metrics?
Both
Lastly, could you share a real-world example where time drift affected your business? This will help us better understand the impact and shape a suitable solution.
An exemple is ofset in database records time since those are intertwined with the local time
An other exemple would be Application Time in a UI for the same reason
============================What are we doing as a mitigation
Currently we have addapted the script we use to have to work with instana with statsd ( com.instana.plugin.statsd )
This script is called by a crontab on the servers
We have a counter to monitor the status of that crontab
We have a gauge to monitor the millisec
We put monitoring on the status of the cron and the milliseconds
Hi @Guest
We understand your request for Instana to monitor server time drift. To scope this properly, could you clarify which time source you want Instana to compare against (e.g., your internal NTP/Chrony servers, a public NTP service, or the Instana agent host itself), and what level of drift you consider unacceptable for your workloads? It would also help to know whether you need this check on all servers or only critical ones, and if you expect just alerting or also historical metrics. Finally, could you share a reliable use case where time drift has impacted your business, so we can better understand the importance and design the right solution?
Thank you!
This is not on the roadmap for the first half of 2025. It will be reevaluated afterward based on shifting priorities.