EnableServiceProfilerInVSCLR2_1

Enable Service Profiler for ASP.NET Core application in Visual Studio

⚠️ .NET Core 2.1 has reached its end of support. For information on upgrading, please visit https://dot.net.

Enable Service Profiler for ASP.NET Core application in Visual Studio is easy. We will walk through the basic steps.

Create the ASP.NET Core Web Application with Docker Support

Let's start by creating an ASP.NET Core Web Application, we will name it EnableSPInVS. You can choose to start with an existing project as well.

During the creation of the project, we will enable the docker support like this:

The same goal could be reached by adding docker support to an existing project like it here: Visual Studio Tools for Docker with ASP.NET Core.

To make it real, make use the following code to add some delay in the controllers to simulate the bottleneck:

private void SimulateDelay()
{
    // Delay for 500ms to 2s to simulate a bottleneck.
    Thread.Sleep((new Random()).Next(500, 2000));
}

Reference HomeController.cs for full code.

Enable Application Insights

Add support for application insights by using the context menu: Add | Application Insights Telemetry... and then follow the wizard:

For detailed step by step instructions, please reference Application Insights for ASP.NET Core.

At the end of the wizard, it is expected to see Application Insights being fully configured.

Add a reference to ServiceProfiler

Right-click on the project in Solution Explorer, choose Manage NuGet Packages... and the reference to the NuGet Package of Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Profiler.AspNetCore.

Then, turn on Service Profiler in Startup.cs:

        public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
        {
            // This statement adds Profiler to the application.
            services.AddServiceProfiler();
            services.AddMvc().SetCompatibilityVersion(CompatibilityVersion.Version_2_2);
        }

Save and build the project. F5 for a Debug. In the output window, it is expected to see the Service Profiler logs in the Debug level:

Keep the application running for 2 minutes, access the website to generate some traffic. At the end of the session, you will see the logs like it below:

Service Profiler session finished. Samples: 14
ServiceProfiler.EventPipe.Client.Schedules.TraceSchedule:Information: Service Profiler session finished. Samples: 14

Give it a few minutes for the trace to arrive the Cloud, and then the trace will become available in the Performance Blade of the Application Insights resource created in the previous step:

Publish to App Service

Before publishing, optionally, it will be helpful if we set the minimum logging level to Information for Service Profiler in appsettings.json:

{
  "Logging": {
    "IncludeScopes": false,
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Warning",
      // Add the following line
      "ServiceProfiler": "Information"
    }
  },
  // Other settings ...
}

Now we are going to publish the project to Azure App Service. Right-click on the project and choose Publish, and select App Service Linux like it below:

Follow the wizard to configure the App Service:

Add Settings for the App Service in the Azure Portal

APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING="InstrumentationKey=08055218-1dcc-48b1-8a67-f449406001c7;IngestionEndpoint=https://westus2-1.in.applicationinsights.azure.com/;LiveEndpoint=https://westus2.livediagnostics.monitor.azure.com/"

It will looks like this:

Note: The setting of the Application Insights connection string should be optional. However, we have a bug in Service Profiler that requires it to be available for now.

Restart your app, the Service Profiler will be turned on and gathering trace for 2 minutes. Try to generate some traffic to your app during that period. If everything is hooked up correctly, you will start to see the traces after 5 to 10 minutes just like when you see the traces in the debug session.

Give it a try and if there's any question, please file an issue.