Support Multi-Cluster Kafka Monitoring from a Single Instana Agent

Problem Statement

Organizations commonly deploy multiple Kafka clusters within a single OpenShift or Kubernetes environment for production, non-production, business unit separation, or regional isolation. Today, the Instana Kafka sensor does not provide a clearly documented and validated approach for monitoring multiple Kafka clusters from a single Instana Agent while allowing each cluster to maintain independent SSL/mTLS configuration.

As a result, customers must deploy additional agents or use unsupported configuration patterns, increasing operational overhead and architectural complexity.

Enhance the Kafka sensor to support:

• Multiple Kafka cluster definitions within a single agent configuration
• Per-cluster settings for:
  • bootstrap_servers
  • cluster_name
  • ssl/mTLS configuration
  • truststores and keystores
  • authentication credentials
• Official documentation with validated examples
• Testing and certification against Red Hat Streams (Strimzi) deployments on OpenShift

Business Justification

• Multi-cluster Kafka deployments are common in enterprise environments.
• Customers want centralized monitoring without deploying additional agents.
• Reduces operational complexity and resource consumption.
• Improves alignment with Red Hat OpenShift and AMQ Streams architectures.
• Removes uncertainty around currently undocumented or unsupported configuration models.