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Azure Monitor adds Worker Service SDK, new ASP.NET core metrics

The release of the Application Insights ASP.NET Core 2.8.0 SDK for Web Applications and the Application Insights Worker Service 2.8.0 SDK for Non-web Applications delivers new value to developers.

Application Insights from Azure Monitor empowers developers and IT professionals to observe, debug, diagnose, and improve their distributed services hosted on the cloud, on-premises, and through hybrid solutions.

The release of the Application Insights for ASP.NET Core 2.8.0 for web applications and the Application Insights for .NET Core Worker Service 2.8.0 for non-web applications delivers new value to developers including:

  • Support for more applications types.
  • New alertable metrics.
  • Support for ASP.NET Core 3.0.
  • Cross-vendor distributed tracing.

Support for more application types

The Application Insights Worker Service SDK supports the new ASP.NET Core 3.0 Worker Service template, and customer engagement on GitHub helped us prioritize this work. Beyond .NET Core Worker Service Applications, this SDK brings the full power of Application Insights to other non-web applications including Console Applications, Queue Processing, and Background Jobs. Get started with our step-by-step onboarding guide.

New alertable metrics

Event Counters allow you to observe and alert on new metrics including Time in Garbage Collection, Allocation Rate, and Thread Pool Queue Length. Event Counters expand the historical Windows Performance Counters to be cross-platform—Linux, MacOS, and Windows. Application Insights now collects these metrics out-of-the-box, making them easily observable and alertable.

Additionally, you can now observe CPU usage on Linux, MacOS, and Windows with one-second latency using our popular Live Metrics Stream. This milestone means our live metrics feature on Linux and MacOS reaches parity with Windows, reinforcing our commitment to cross-platform feature parity.

Support for ASP.NET Core 3.0

Application Insights now supports ASP.NET Core 3.0 Applications when using Application Insights ASP.NET Core 2.8.0 SDK or higher.

Cross-vendor distributed tracing

Microsoft joins a growing list of vendors adopting W3C Trace Context. This means your traces will propagate across services instrumented with other application performance monitoring vendors who recognize the W3C Trace Context standard. As more vendors adopt the W3C Trace Context standard, the reach of your distributed tracing will expand.

Future plans

Application Insights ASP.NET Core 3.0 support in Azure App Service is scheduled to release in November.