To begin tracing applications written in any language, first make sure to have the StackState Agent installed and configured. The .NET Tracer runs in-process to instrument your applications and sends traces from your application to the StackState Agent.
To enable tracing and sending it to StackState Trace Agent, you need to follow the below steps to get started.
To start instrumentation for your dot net application, add the Datadog.Trace
NuGet package to your application.
This can be done using in number of ways:
Using Package Manager
Install-Package Datadog.Trace -Version 1.13.2
using net cli
dotnet add package Datadog.Trace --version 1.13.2
reference in solution file
<PackageReference Include="Datadog.Trace" Version="1.13.2" />
In your code, you can access the global tracer through the Datadog.Trace.Tracer.Instance
property to create new spans.
There are multiple ways to configure the .NET Tracer:
in .NET code
setting environment variables
editing the application’s app.config
/web.config
file (.NET Framework only)
To configure the Tracer in application code, create a TracerSettings
from the default configuration sources. Set properties on this TracerSettings
instance before passing it to a Tracer
constructor. For example:
using Datadog.Trace;​// read default configuration sources (env vars, web.config, datadog.json)var settings = TracerSettings.FromDefaultSources();​// change some settingssettings.ServiceName = "MyService";settings.AgentUri = new Uri("http://localhost:8126/");​// disable the AdoNet integrationsettings.Integrations["AdoNet"].Enabled = false;​// create a new Tracer using these settingsvar tracer = new Tracer(settings);​// set the global tracerTracer.Instance = tracer;
Note: Settings must be set on TracerSettings
before creating the Tracer
. Changes made to TracerSettings
properies after the Tracer
is created are ignored.
To configure the Tracer using environment variables, set the variables before launching the instrumented application. For example:
rem Set environment variablesSET DD_TRACE_AGENT_URL=http://localhost:8126SET DD_SERVICE_NAME=MyServiceSET DD_ADONET_ENABLED=false​rem Launch applicationexample.exe
Note: To set environment variables for a Windows Service, use the multi-string key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\{service name}\Environment
in the Windows Registry.
To configure the Tracer using an app.config
or web.config
file, use the <appSettings>
section. For example:
<configuration><appSettings><add key="DD_TRACE_AGENT_URL" value="http://localhost:8126"/><add key="DD_SERVICE_NAME" value="SampleMVC4Application"/><add key="DD_ADONET_ENABLED" value="false"/></appSettings></configuration>
Those two steps (referencing assembly, configuring endpoint) is enough for stackstate-agent to start consuming traces info.
The following tables list the supported configuration variables. Use the first name (e.g. DD_TRACE_AGENT_URL
) when setting environment variables or configuration files. The second name, if present (e.g. AgentUri
), indicates the name the TracerSettings
property to use when changing settings in the code.
The first table below lists configuration variables available.
Setting Name | Description |
| Sets the URL endpoint where traces are sent. Overrides |
| Sets the host where traces are sent (the host running the Agent). Can be a hostname or an IP address. Ignored if |
| Sets the port where traces are sent (the port where the Agent is listening for connections). Ignored if |
| If specified, adds the |
| If specified, sets the default service name. Otherwise, the .NET Tracer tries to determine service name automatically from application name (e.g. IIS application name, process entry assembly, or process name). |
| If specified, adds all of the specified tags to all generated spans. |
To use experimental automatic instrumentation on Windows, install the .NET Tracer on the host using the MSI installer for Windows.
After installing the .NET Tracer, restart applications and IIS service so they can read the new environment variables.
If your application runs in IIS, tracing information will be collected immediately after the service restart.
For Dotnet Windows applications not running in IIS, set these two environment variables before starting your application to enable automatic instrumentation:
NAME | VALUE |
COR_ENABLE_PROFILING | 1 |
COR_PROFILER | {846F5F1C-F9AE-4B07-969E-05C26BC060D8} |
For example, environment variables can be set in the cmd file used to start your application:
rem Set environment variablesSET COR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1SET COR_PROFILER={846F5F1C-F9AE-4B07-969E-05C26BC060D8}​rem Start applicationexample.exe
To set environment variables for a Windows Service, use the multi-string key
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\{service name}\Environment
in the Windows Registry.
Note: The .NET runtime tries to load a profiler into any .NET process that is started with these environment variables. You should limit instrumentation only to the applications that need to be traced. We do not recommend setting these environment variables globally as this causes all .NET processes on the host to load the profiler.
If host has datadog so-called automatic instrumentation installed, following settings can be used.
Setting Name | Description |
| Enables or disables all automatic instrumentation. Setting the environment variable to |
| Enables or disables debug logs in the Tracer. Valid values are: |
| Sets the path for the CLR profiler’s log file. Default: |
| Sets a list of integrations to disable. All other integrations remain enabled. If not set, all integrations are enabled. Supports multiple values separated with semicolons. |
Framework or library | NuGet package | Integration Name |
ASP.NET (including Web Forms) | built-in |
|
ASP.NET MVC |
|
|
ASP.NET Web API 2 |
|
|
WCF (server) | built-in |
|
ADO.NET | built-in |
|
HttpClient / HttpClientHandler | built-in |
|
WebClient / WebRequest | built-in |
|
Redis (StackExchange client) |
|
|
Redis (ServiceStack client) |
|
|
Elasticsearch |
|
|
MongoDB |
|
|