⚠️ Deprecation Notice

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET is deprecated as of February 21, 2024 and will reach End of Support on February 21 2025. Until then, only critical security fixes and bug fixes will be provided. After the date, this repository will be archived and no longer maintained. New customers instrumenting the .NET ecosystem should use Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET. Existing customers should consider migrating to Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET which offers similar capabilities. To learn how to migrate, see migration guide.

SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET provides automatic instrumentations for popular .NET libraries and frameworks.

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET is a .NET Profiler which instruments supported libraries and frameworks with bytecode manipulation to capture and send telemetry data (metrics, traces, and logs).

By default:

• all spans are sampled and reported,
• B3 headers and W3C headers are used for context propagation,
• Zipkin trace exporter is used to send spans as JSON in the Zipkin v2 format.

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET registers an OpenTracing GlobalTracer so you can support existing custom instrumentation or add custom instrumentation to your application later.

The conventions used by SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET are inspired by the OpenTelemetry Trace Semantic Conventions. OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib with its Zipkin Receiver can be used to receive, process and export telemetry data. However, until OpenTelemetry .NET Auto-Instrumentation is not useable, SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET is not able to correlate the spans created with OpenTelemetry .NET and ActivitySource.

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Requirements

• .NET Core 3.1, .NET 5.0, .NET 6.0, and .NET 7.0 on Windows and Linux
• .NET Framework 4.6.1 and higher on Windows

Instrumented libraries and frameworks

See instrumented-libraries.md to know for which libraries and frameworks are instrumented.

Get started

Make sure you set up the Splunk OpenTelemtry Collector to receive telemetry data.

Installation

Automated download and installation for Windows

Run in PowerShell as administrator:

# signalfx-dotnet-tracing github repository API
$api = "https://api.github.com/repos/signalfx/signalfx-dotnet-tracing/releases/latest"

# determine OS architecture
$os_bits = (Get-CimInstance Win32_OperatingSystem).OSArchitecture
$os_arch = (&{If($os_bits -eq "64-bit") {"x64"} Else {"x86"}})

# File pattern to search for
$pattern = "signalfx-dotnet-tracing-*-$os_arch.msi"

# Find latest MSI to download
$download = (Invoke-WebRequest $api | ConvertFrom-Json).assets | Where-Object { $_.name -like $pattern } | Select-Object -Property browser_download_url,name

# Download installer MSI to Temp
$msi = Join-Path $env:temp $download.name
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $download.browser_download_url -OutFile $msi

# Install downloaded MSI
Start-Process msiexec.exe -Wait -ArgumentList "/I $msi /quiet"

# Cleanup
Remove-Item $msi

Manual installation

You can find the latest installation packages on the Releases page.

File	Operating system	Architecture	Install command	Notes
x86_64.rpm	Red Hat-based Linux distributions	x64	rpm -ivh signalfx-dotnet-tracing.rpm	RPM package
x64.msi	Windows 64-bit	x64	msiexec /i signalfx-dotnet-tracing-x64.msi /quiet
x86.msi	Windows 32-bit	x86	msiexec /i signalfx-dotnet-tracing-x86.msi /quiet
tar.gz	Linux distributions using glibc	x64	tar -xf signalfx-dotnet-tracing.tar.gz -C /opt/signalfx	Currently, all officially supported Linux distribtions except Alpine use glibc
amd64.deb	Debian-based Linux distributions	x64	dpkg -i signalfx-dotnet-tracing.deb	DEB package
musl.tar.gz	Linux distributions using musl	x64	tar -xf signalfx-dotnet-tracing-musl.tar.gz -C /opt/signalfx	Alpine Linux uses musl

On Linux, after the installation, you can optionally create the log directory:

/opt/signalfx/createLogPath.sh

Instrument a .NET application on Windows

Before running the application, set the following environment variables:

COR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1
COR_PROFILER={B4C89B0F-9908-4F73-9F59-0D77C5A06874}
CORECLR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1
CORECLR_PROFILER={B4C89B0F-9908-4F73-9F59-0D77C5A06874}

Example in PowerShell:

$Env:COR_ENABLE_PROFILING = "1"                                   # Enable the .NET Framework Profiler
$Env:COR_PROFILER = "{B4C89B0F-9908-4F73-9F59-0D77C5A06874}"      # Select the .NET Framework Profiler
$Env:CORECLR_ENABLE_PROFILING = "1"                               # Enable the .NET (Core) Profiler
$Env:CORECLR_PROFILER = "{B4C89B0F-9908-4F73-9F59-0D77C5A06874}"  # Select the .NET (Core) Profiler
# Now the auto-instrumentation is configured in this shell session.
# You can set additional settings and run your application, for example:
$Env:SIGNALFX_SERVICE_NAME = "my-service-name"                    # Set the service name
$Env:SIGNALFX_ENV = "production"                                  # Set the environment name
dotnet run                                                        # Run your application                                                     

Instrument a .NET application on Linux

Before running the application, set the following environment variables:

CORECLR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1
CORECLR_PROFILER={B4C89B0F-9908-4F73-9F59-0D77C5A06874}
CORECLR_PROFILER_PATH=/opt/signalfx/SignalFx.Tracing.ClrProfiler.Native.so
SIGNALFX_DOTNET_TRACER_HOME=/opt/signalfx

Example in Bash:

export CORECLR_ENABLE_PROFILING="1"                                                 # Enable the .NET (Core) Profiler
export CORECLR_PROFILER="{B4C89B0F-9908-4F73-9F59-0D77C5A06874}"                    # Select the .NET (Core) Profiler
export CORECLR_PROFILER_PATH="/opt/signalfx/SignalFx.Tracing.ClrProfiler.Native.so" # Select the .NET (Core) Profiler file path
export SIGNALFX_DOTNET_TRACER_HOME="/opt/signalfx"                                  # Select the SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET home folder
# Now the auto-instrumentation is configured in this shell session.
# You can set additional settings and run your application, for example:
export SIGNALFX_SERVICE_NAME="my-service-name"  # Set the service name
export SIGNALFX_ENV="production"                # Set the environment name
dotnet run                                      # Run your application 

Instrument a Windows Service running a .NET application

See windows-service-instrumentation.md.

Instrument an ASP.NET application deployed on IIS

See iis-instrumentation.md.

Azure instrumentation guide

See azure-instrumentation.md.

Advanced configuration

See advanced-config.md.

Manual instrumentation

See manual-instrumentation.md.

Correlating traces with logs

See correlating-traces-with-logs.md.

Metrics

See metrics.md

AlwaysOn Profiling

See always-on-profiling.md

Troubleshooting

See troubleshooting.md.

Contributing

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before creating an issue or a pull request.

License

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET is a redistribution of the .NET Tracer for Datadog APM. It is licensed under the terms of the Apache Software License version 2.0. For more details, see the license file.

The third-party dependencies list can be found here.

ℹ️  SignalFx was acquired by Splunk in October 2019. See Splunk SignalFx for more information.