Controlling Instrumentation of .NET Applications

Products

• CA Application Performance Management Agent (APM / Wily / Introscope)
• CA Application Performance Management (APM / Wily / Introscope)
• INTROSCOPE
• DX Application Performance Management

Issue/Introduction

How do I monitor specific applications in my Introscope for .NET installation?

Environment

Release : 11.1.0

Component : APM Agents

Cause

This feature aims to control the set of applications to be instrumented by the .NET Agent. .NET attaches an Agent to e
and non-IIS). This is a limitation in the CLR profiler interface and has been problem for customers that have installed and used the .NET
control not only what managed application (.exe ) is instrumented, but also which IIS application is instrumented.
Feature Description
With additional configuration options to the Agent profile, we can now restrict instrumentation based on the .exe name or the application
process (w3wp.exe or aspnet_wp.exe) is treated as an .exe to be attached to the Agent, but the second level of filtering takes effect and
when the application pool is configured to be monitored.

Benefit:
This feature eliminates unnecessary instrumentation, which can reduce overall overhead. Furthermore, this feature allows the Agent to a
Feature Requirement (PM Liaison)

There are two levels of filters that we can use:

1. The name of the executable file (.exe ).
2. The name of the application pool. (If our application pool is in the list to be monitored, set the event mask.)

Therefore, the implementation does the following:
1. Gets the process for which the CLR has been launched, using the Windows API. If our process is in the list of the .exe filess that ne
the configuration), set the event mask.
2. If the process is an IIS process, it gets the name of the application pool (also using the Windows API). If our application pool is in t
need to be monitored (from the configuration), set the event mask.

Resolution

Usage Overview
Use the Agent profile to configure the applications you want to monitor. If you are interested in monitoring only IIS applications, you can
and instead configure which application pools you need to monitor. Once the configuration is done, restart IIS and the settings will take e
need to be monitored, you can use either .exe names or the full paths to the .exe files.


Configure the following properties in the Agent profile:
1. Provide a comma-separated list of application names/paths you want to monitor in the introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorApplic
introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorApplications= RandomApp.exe,testapp.exe,readloop.exe,C:\windows32\system\testap
Both absolute paths and .exe file names are supported.
The list is case sensitive.
Relative paths are not supported.
Wildcards are not supported.

2. For monitoring application pools, provide a comma-separated list in the
introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorAppPools property, enclosing the pool name in quotes. For example:
introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorAppPools="DefaultAppPool","MSPetShop","DotNetNuke"
If the application is not configured to run in an application pool use "NULL" in the application pool name for it to be monitored.

Examples
introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorApplications=w3wp.exe,aspnet_wp.exe,RandomApp.exe,testapp.exe,readloop.exe,C:\window
introscope.agent.dotnet.monitorAppPools="DefaultAppPool","MSPetShop"