Microsoft .NET (deprecated)

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the .NET (dotnet) apps monitor. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics

CAUTION: This integration is deprecated and reached End of Support in February 2025. It was removed from the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector starting from version v0.118.0.

To forward data to Splunk Observability Cloud, use the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET. To learn more refer to Instrument your .NET application for Splunk Observability Cloud (OpenTelemetry).

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the dotnet monitor type to report metrics for .NET applications.

This integration is only available on Windows.

This integration reports the instantaneous values for Windows Performance Counters. Most of these performance counters are gauges that represent rates per second and percentages. This means that in a collection interval, spikes might occur on the Performance Counters. The best way to mitigate this limitation is to increase the reporting interval on this monitor to collect more frequently.

The following is a list of the most critical .NET performance counters:

Exceptions
Logical threads
Physical threads
Heap bytes
Time in GC
Committed bytes
Pinned objects

Benefits

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Installation

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host:
- Install on Windows
Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.
- See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
- See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
- For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
- Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/dotnet:
    type: dotnet
    ...  # Additional config

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
 pipelines:
   metrics:
     receivers: [smartagent/dotnet]

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for this integration:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`counterRefreshInterval`	no	`int64`	Number of seconds that wildcards in counter paths should be expanded and how often to refresh counters from configuration. (default: `60s`)
`printValid`	no	`bool`	Print out the configurations that match available performance counters. This option is used for debugging. (default: `false`)

Metrics

This integration emits all metrics by default, but they are categorized as custom metrics. See the notes for more details.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector/main/internal/signalfx-agent/pkg/monitors/dotnet/metadata.yaml

Notes

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types.
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.
In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.
To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics.

Troubleshooting

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal.
Contact Splunk Support.

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers.
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups.

Documentation