metrics.md

Metrics

🚧  Status: Experimental - exported telemetry and configuration settings may change.

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET includes automatic runtime metrics collection. When enabled, metrics are periodically captured and sent to Splunk Observability Cloud.

To enable runtime metrics, set the SIGNALFX_METRICS_{0}_ENABLED environment variable to true for your .NET process. The supported metrics types are NetRuntime, Process, AspNetCore, Traces. For example, in order to enable NetRuntime metrics, set SIGNALFX_METRICS_NetRuntime_ENABLED=true.

Runtime metrics are automatically enabled when AlwaysOn memory profiling is enabled. Memory profiling setting overrides metrics setting (runtime metrics will always be enabled if memory profiling is enabled, even if SIGNALFX_METRICS_NetRuntime_ENABLED is set to false).

The following metrics are collected by default after enabling .NET metrics. To learn about differences between SignalFx metric types, visit documentation.

.NET runtime metrics

Names and metric structure of the metrics exported are aligned with the OpenTelemetry implementation from the Runtime package.

Metric	Description	Type
process.runtime.dotnet.exceptions.count	Count of exceptions since the previous observation.	Counter
process.runtime.dotnet.gc.collections.count	Number of garbage collections since the process started.	CumulativeCounter
process.runtime.dotnet.gc.heap.size	Heap size, as observed during the last garbage collection.	Gauge
process.runtime.dotnet.gc.objects.size	Count of bytes currently in use by live objects in the GC heap.	Gauge
process.runtime.dotnet.gc.allocations.size	Count of bytes allocated on the managed GC heap since the process started. (.NET Core only)	CumulativeCounter
process.runtime.dotnet.gc.committed_memory.size	Amount of committed virtual memory for the managed GC heap, as observed during the last garbage collection. (.NET 6 only)	Gauge
process.runtime.dotnet.gc.pause.time	Number of milliseconds spent in GC pause. (.NET Core only)(equivalent not yet available on OpenTelemetry side)	Counter
process.runtime.dotnet.monitor.lock_contention.count	Contentions count when trying to acquire a monitor lock since the process started.	CumulativeCounter
process.runtime.dotnet.thread_pool.threads.count	Number of thread pool threads, as observed during the last measurement. Only available for .NET Core.	Gauge

Process metrics

Names and metric structure of the metrics exported are aligned with the OpenTelemetry implementation from the Process package.

Metric	Description	Type
process.memory.usage	The amount of physical memory allocated for this process.	Gauge
process.memory.virtual	The amount of committed virtual memory for this process.	Gauge
process.cpu.time	Total CPU seconds broken down by different states(user,system).	CumulativeCounter
process.cpu.utilization (deprecated)	Difference in process.cpu.time since the last measurement, divided by the elapsed time and number of CPUs available to the process.	Gauge
process.threads	Process threads count.	Gauge

ASP.NET Core metrics

Metric	Description	Type
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.connections.current	The current number of active HTTP connections to the web server.	Gauge
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.connections.queue_length	The current length of the HTTP connection queue.	Gauge
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.connections.total	The total number of HTTP connections to the web server.	Gauge
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.requests.current	The current number of HTTP requests that have started, but not yet stopped.	Gauge
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.requests.failed	The number of failed HTTP requests received by the server.	Gauge
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.requests.queue_length	The current length of the HTTP request queue.	Gauge
signalfx.dotnet.aspnetcore.requests.total	The total number of HTTP requests received by the server.	Gauge

Additional permissions for IIS

The .NET Framework collects gc heap size metrics using performance counters. To let service accounts and IIS application pool accounts access counter data, add them to the Performance Monitoring Users group.

IIS application pools use special accounts that do not appear in the list of users. To add IIS application pool accounts to the Performance Monitoring Users group, search for IIS APPPOOL\<name-of-the-pool>. For example, the user for the DefaultAppPool pool is IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool.

The following example shows how to add an IIS application pool account to the Performance Monitoring Users group from a command prompt with Administrator permissions:

net localgroup "Performance Monitor Users" "IIS APPPOOL\DefaultAppPool" /add

Trace metrics

The SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET supports trace metrics collection.

To enable additional metrics related to traces, set the SIGNALFX_METRICS_Traces_ENABLED environment variable to true for your .NET process.

Metric	Description	Type
signalfx.tracer.queue.enqueued_traces	The total number of traces pushed into the queue.	Counter
signalfx.tracer.queue.dequeued_traces	The number of traces pulled from the queue for flushing.	Counter
signalfx.tracer.queue.enqueued_spans	The total number of spans pushed into the queue.	Counter
signalfx.tracer.queue.dequeued_spans	The number of spans pulled from the queue for flushing.	Counter
signalfx.tracer.queue.dropped_traces	The total number of traces dropped due to a full queue.	Counter
signalfx.tracer.queue.dropped_spans	The total number of spans dropped due to a full queue.	Counter
signalfx.tracer.heartbeat	The total number of tracers.	Gauge