An enterprise deploying Instana Custom Edition wants to separate data storage from processing components to enable independent scaling. Which backend components can be placed on dedicated servers separate from the main processing nodes in a Custom Edition deployment?

Instana Custom Edition supports a distributed deployment model where data stores such as Cassandra (used for spans and trace data) and Clickhouse (used for analytics queries) can reside on dedicated servers with storage-optimized hardware. This separation allows the processing tier and storage tier to be scaled independently based on the specific bottleneck in the environment. Instana Standard Edition is designed as a single-server deployment and does not support this level of component distribution. The correct answer is 'Cassandra and Clickhouse can be deployed on dedicated storage-optimized servers separate from processing nodes'. The incorrect options — 'The Instana UI server must always be co-located with the backend data stores on the same host', 'All Custom Edition components are required to run on a single high-performance server', 'Only the Zookeeper coordination service can be separated from the primary backend processing node' — are wrong because they do not align with IBM Instana's architecture or recommended practices for this scenario. Understanding this concept is essential for the Domain 3: Installation domain of the IBM Instana Observability certification.