Dot Net Agent configuration and Naming
Article ID: 187482
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
How does the Dot Net Agent monitoring the executable and the Agent Naming work?
For Example: Perfmon agent in Windows running as a Windows service.
Environment
Release : All versions
Component : APM Agents
Cause
Engineering has provided insightful information on Dot Net Agent monitoring and naming.
Resolution
- By default .NET Agent monitors w3wp.exe and aspnet_wp.exe. (you can see them in agent properties file) The first one is for IIS 6 and while the other one is for older IIS versions.
- The only other exe application that gets monitored by default is, PerfMonCollectorAgent.exe (Note that you don’t find this name in agent properties file and is hard coded internally)
- While you have an option of renaming a windows service at least through registry editor (I am not sure if renaming facility was there earlier in some older versions of agent before a revamp), that new named application will not be monitored by default and you need to explicitly specify that executable name to get it monitored as below for example.
introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorApplications=w3wp.exe,aspnet_wp.exe,MyPerfMon.exe
But this will be monitored like another .Net application and you don’t see perfmon related metrics that you wanted to collect based on properties listed in agent profile.
Hence this renaming and monitoring is of no use as you miss the basic perfmon metrics.
- If introscope.agent.agentAutoNamingEnabled property is set to false and a name is given to the introscope.agent.agentName property, you will get a name with %n appended to the agent name like MyApp, MyApp%1, MyApp%2 and so on which applies to PerfMon collector service too regardless of the above stated hard coded name as this property overrides that. In this case, you can only identify it based on expanding it and checking for the PerfMon node in it. This service if already running and visible in UI, the original name PerfMonCollectorAgent.exe even if IIS is reset until the actual windows service gets restarted.
- The service name in windows which is “CA APM PerfMon Collector Service”, this is same as of now and may get altered based on PM directions like changing it to Broadcom or anything else.
Additional Information
The .NET Agent document explains about configuring perfmon collector properties. The agent profile that has all perfmon collector properties and had comments above each of the property which also explains about the property.
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/it-operations-management/dx-apm-agents/SaaS/microsoft-net-agent/configure-the-net-agent.html
Check this above link to go through its related properties.
Coming to the two points that you had mentioned below,
How to change the .Net Perfmon windows service name
This is not linked to our product for documenting such points, and if still customer wanted to change the windows service name for some reason, they can follow windows documentation of renaming the service. I believe this may involve some registry editing.
How to change the agent name
Regarding Agent naming, this is not related to perfmon agent. For agent name, we have autonaming and naming properties and is fully documented.
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