Overview

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.

Traces installation

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.

Configuration

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 settings
    settings.ServiceName = "MyService";
    settings.AgentUri = new Uri("http://localhost:8126/");
​
    // disable the AdoNet integration
    settings.Integrations["AdoNet"].Enabled = false;
​
    // create a new Tracer using these settings
    var tracer = new Tracer(settings);
​
    // set the global tracer
    Tracer.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 variables
    SET DD_TRACE_AGENT_URL=http://localhost:8126
    SET DD_SERVICE_NAME=MyService
    SET DD_ADONET_ENABLED=false
​
    rem Launch application
    example.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.

Configuration Variables

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.

Automatic instrumentation (experimental)

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:

For example, environment variables can be set in the cmd file used to start your application:

rem Set environment variables
SET COR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1
SET COR_PROFILER={846F5F1C-F9AE-4B07-969E-05C26BC060D8}
​
rem Start application
example.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.

Frameworks supported out of the box