Domain 6: Troubleshooting

IBM Certified Instana Observability v1.0.277 Administrator - Professional · 37 questions

• A new Instana agent has been installed on a Linux host and the agent process is confirmed running via ps aux. After 20 minutes, no host metrics appear in the Instana UI. Which file should the administrator examine first to diagnose why the agent is not reporting?
• Service A (Java) calls Service B (Node.js) via HTTP. In Instana, Service A's traces show the outgoing HTTP call as an exit span, but no span from Service B ever appears and Service B is never listed as a traced service. Host metrics for both hosts appear normally. What is the most likely cause?
• An Instana agent DaemonSet is deployed to a Kubernetes cluster and all agent pods show status Running. However, no Kubernetes node, pod, or namespace metadata appears in the Instana UI. Agent pod logs show repeated entries: io.kubernetes.client.openapi.ApiException: 403 Forbidden. What is the most likely cause?
• An Instana agent is deployed on a host in a network DMZ. The agent process starts and logs show it is attempting connections to the configured Instana SaaS backend, but all attempts time out. The network team confirms that explicit outbound firewall rules are required. Which outbound port and protocol must be permitted for the agent to communicate with the Instana backend?
• A team configured an Instana alert for CPU utilization exceeding 80% on a group of application servers. The alert fires 3-4 times daily, but when engineers investigate, observed CPU usage is around 45-55%. Reviewing Instana metric graphs reveals brief CPU spikes to 85-90% lasting only 2-3 seconds. What is the most appropriate configuration change to eliminate these false positive alerts?
• After a configuration deployment, over 300 Instana alerts fire within 60 seconds, flooding on-call notification channels. The individual alerts are technically valid but are expected consequences of the deployment. What is the most appropriate Instana feature to prevent this situation during future planned deployments?
• A Java application server is running on a host monitored by the Instana agent. Host-level metrics such as CPU, memory, and disk I/O appear correctly in the Instana UI. However, JVM-specific metrics including heap usage, garbage collection activity, and thread counts are completely absent. The agent.log shows no Java sensor errors. What should the administrator investigate next?
• An Instana agent operated correctly until an organization-wide credential rotation was performed. Immediately after, the agent.log begins showing: ERROR backend - Authentication failed: 401 Unauthorized. The agent retries every 30 seconds but continues to fail. What is the most likely remediation step?
• After updating the Instana agent DaemonSet image tag to a newer version in a Kubernetes cluster, multiple agent pods enter CrashLoopBackOff status. The administrator needs to identify the root cause quickly. Which action will most directly reveal why the pods are crashing?
• Users report the on-premises Instana backend UI is extremely slow, with dashboards taking 45 seconds or more to render. All backend processes are running. The number of monitored entities grew from 500 to 5,000 over the past month. What should the administrator investigate first to address the performance degradation?
• An administrator notices that a MySQL database server appears twice in the Instana infrastructure map: once as an auto-discovered entity and once as a manually configured entity from configuration.yaml. This results in duplicate metrics and inflated entity counts against the Instana license. What is the correct resolution?
• A Spring Boot application running as a Kubernetes pod emits structured JSON logs to stdout. The development team expects these logs to appear in Instana log analytics, but no log entries from this service appear in the UI despite its traces and metrics being visible. What is the most likely reason the logs are not appearing?
• An engineer needs more diagnostic detail from an Instana agent to investigate a specific problem. What is the correct approach to log levels?
• An Instana installation is behaving unexpectedly and the cause is unclear. What is the appropriate first diagnostic step?
• An installed Instana agent is not reporting any data. Which sequence of checks is appropriate?
• A self-hosted Instana backend installation fails. Which checks should be carried out?
• Why should a failed prerequisite check never be bypassed during a backend installation?
• What is the main drawback of leaving debug logging enabled permanently in production?
• Why should logs be preserved rather than cleared before opening a support case?
• Why is it wrong to interpret an absence of agent data as a sign that everything is healthy?
• Why are certificates a common cause of backend installation failure?
• Why should raised log levels be scoped to specific components rather than applied globally?
• Why is restarting production services a poor first diagnostic step?
• Which finding would most directly explain an agent that starts successfully but never appears in the Instana interface?
• What is the risk of assuming that every backend installation error is a licensing problem?
• An investigation into an agent problem has been completed at an elevated log level. What should happen next?
• Which logs are most relevant when an agent installs successfully but never appears in the backend?
• What role does the agent's own log play when an agent is not reporting?
• Why is tuning alert rules a pointless first step when the backend has failed to install?
• Why is reducing log detail during active troubleshooting counterproductive?
• Which log-level practice best balances diagnostic value against operational cost?
• What is the limitation of relying on interface screenshots as diagnostic evidence?
• Why is changing dashboard filters an ineffective first response to a host that is not reporting?
• Which statement best summarises troubleshooting a failed backend installation?
• Which statement best summarises how log levels should be managed when deeper diagnostic detail is required?
• Which statement best summarises log collection practice when troubleshooting Instana?
• Which statement best summarises how to troubleshoot agents that are not reporting?