Configuring Application Insights

Setting up Application Insights on a cluster for PRODUCTION

To see how to configure Application Insights in production, check this article.

Setting up Application Insights on a cluster for DEVELOPMENT

When developing, it can be very useful to link different your cluster with Application Insights. For example, if you encounter an exception, you will be able to find it later and see the events leading to it.

To set up Application Insights, you can either :

create a YAML file at the root of your cluster.
The file name does not matter. In the file, create an ApplicationInsights section. In the section, you must define a sub-section for the part of the application you want to track : Generator, Server or Client. Options can be set in these sub-sections.
Example :

ApplicationInsights:
  Client:
    ConnectionString: InstrumentationKey=1a11a111-1a1a-1111-a111-1aaa1a1a1a11;IngestionEndpoint=https://westeurope-5.in.  applicationinsights.azure.com/;LiveEndpoint=https://westeurope.livediagnostics.monitor.azure.com/;  ApplicationId=2b22b222-2b2b-2222-b222-2bbb2b2b2b22
    CorrelationHeaderExcludedDomains:
      - domain1.com
      - domain2.com
  Generator:
    ConnectionString: InstrumentationKey=1a11a111-1a1a-1111-a111-1aaa1a1a1a11;IngestionEndpoint=https://westeurope-5.in.  applicationinsights.azure.com/;LiveEndpoint=https://westeurope.livediagnostics.monitor.azure.com/;  ApplicationId=2b22b222-2b2b-2222-b222-2bbb2b2b2b22
    DeveloperMode: true
  Server:
    ConnectionString: InstrumentationKey=1a11a111-1a1a-1111-a111-1aaa1a1a1a11;IngestionEndpoint=https://westeurope-5.in.  applicationinsights.azure.com/;LiveEndpoint=https://westeurope.livediagnostics.monitor.azure.com/;  ApplicationId=2b22b222-2b2b-2222-b222-2bbb2b2b2b22
    DeveloperMode: true
    EnableHeartbeat: false
    RequestCollectionOptions:
      TrackExceptions: false

for the server only, create an appSettings.Development.json file at the root of the cluster.
In the file, create an ApplicationInsights section and set options inside of it.
Example :

{
  "ApplicationInsights": {
    "ConnectionString": "InstrumentationKey=1a11a111-1a1a-1111-a111-1aaa1a1a1a11;IngestionEndpoint=https://westeurope-5.in.  applicationinsights.azure.com/;LiveEndpoint=https://westeurope.livediagnostics.monitor.azure.com/;  ApplicationId=2b22b222-2b2b-2222-b222-2bbb2b2b2b22",
    "DeveloperMode": true,
    "EnableHeartbeat": false,
    "RequestCollectionOptions": {
      "TrackExceptions": false
    }
  }
}

During the generation, Neos does the following :

reading the cluster YAML configuration.
configuring Application Insights for tracking generation logs using the generator configuration in the YAML configuration.
generating an appSettings.json file that contains the server Application Insights configuration. This file can be found in the same directory as the DLL of the AspNetCore project (usually myCluster\server\bin\MyCluster.AspNetCore).
copying the appSettings.Development.json file to the same directory as the DLL of the AspNetCore project (usually mycluster\server\bin\MyCluster.AspNetCore).
generating an applicationInsights.json file for the client. This file can be found in the public directory of the client (usually myCluster\client\public).

These are the files that are used to configure Application Insights in the server and client applications when you launch the neos run command.

Supported options

Before Neos 1.21

Before version 1.21, Neos only supports a predefined list of options.

Generator

Name	Default value	Description
DeveloperMode	`false`	When `true`, forces Application Insights to quickly send logs to the Azure repository to facilitate development. More information.
InstrumentationKey		Required Instrumentation key of the Application Insights Azure repository that will receive logs from the generator.

Server

For more information, see the Microsoft documentation and GitHub.

Name	Default value	Description
AddAutoCollectedMetricExtractor	`true`	When `true`, adds a telemetry processor that sends pre-aggregated statistics about requests and dependencies.
DeveloperMode	`false`	Must be `false` in production. When `true`, forces Application Insights to quickly send logs to the Azure repository to facilitate development. More information.
EnableAdaptiveSampling	`true`	When `true`, reduces traffic by filtering certain data while maintaining accurate statistics. More information.
EnableAzureInstanceMetadataTelemetryModule	`true`	When `true`, monitors remote dependencies.
EnableDependencyTrackingTelemetryModule	`true`	When `true`, collects event counters. More information.
EnableEventCounterCollectionModule	`true`	When `true`, collects event counters. More information.
EnableHeartbeat	`true`	When `true`, periodically sends statistics about the execution environment (such as .NET version, Azure environment information, etc.) by default every 15 minutes.
EnablePerformanceCounterCollectionModule	`true`	When `true`, collects performance counters.
EnableQuickPulseMetricStream	`true`	When `true`, monitors CPU and memory usage in real-time.
EnableRequestTrackingTelemetryModule	`true`	When `true`, collects telemetry data for incoming web requests.
InstrumentationKey		Required Instrumentation key of the Application Insights Azure repository that will receive logs from the server.
ResourceGroup		Name of the Azure resource group the Application Insights repository belongs to. Only used for Application Insights code lens in Visual Studio. More information.
ResourceName		Name of the Application Insights repository. Only used for Application Insights code lens in Visual Studio. More information.
TrackExceptions	`true`	When `true`, reports on the tracking of unhandled exceptions in the request collection module

Note

It is recommended to use the same instrumentation key for the server and the client.
This allows Application Insights to link together client and server logs to be able to see the full log history of an action.

Client

For more information, see the Microsoft documentation.

Name	Default value	Description
DisableAjaxTracking	`false`	When `true`, disables Ajax calls tracking.
DisableExceptionTracking	`false`	When `true`, disables exceptions tracking.
DisableFetchTracking	`false`	When `true`, disables Fetch requests tracking.
EnableAjaxErrorStatusText	`false`	When `true`, include response error data text boolean in dependency event on failed AJAX requests.
EnableAjaxPerfTracking	`false`	When `true`, enable looking up and including extra browser window.performance timings in the reported Ajax (XHR and fetch) reported metrics.
EnableAutoRouteTracking	`true`	When `true`, enables route changes tracking for Single Page Applications.
EnableCorsCorrelation	`true`	When `true`, adds two headers ('Request-Id' and 'Request-Context') to all CORS requests to correlate outgoing AJAX dependencies with corresponding requests on the server side.
EnableRequestHeaderTracking	`false`	When `true`, AJAX & Fetch request headers is tracked.
EnableResponseHeaderTracking	`false`	When `true`, AJAX & Fetch request's response headers is tracked
EnableUnhandledPromiseRejectionTracking	`true`	When `true`, tracks unhandled promise rejections in the code.
InstrumentationKey		Required Instrumentation key of the Application Insights Azure repository that will receive logs from the client.

Note

Since Neos 1.21

Generator

Name	Default value	Description
ConnectionString		Required Connection string to the Application Insights Azure repository that will receive logs from the generator. If both `ConnectionString` and `InstrumentationKey` are configured, `InstrumentationKey` is ignored.
DeveloperMode	`false`	When `true`, forces Application Insights to quickly send logs to the Azure repository to facilitate development. More information.
InstrumentationKey		Deprecated Use `ConnectionString` instead. Instrumentation key of the Application Insights Azure repository that will receive logs from the generator.

Server

Every available and future options are supported. Options can be found in the Microsoft documentation and on GitHub.

Prefer using ConnectionString instead of InstrumentationKey.
If both options a configured, InstrumentationKey is ignored. InstrumentationKey should only be used to see Application Insights stats in Visual Studio.

Neos sets default values for the following options when they are not set in the configuration :

Name	Default value
RequestCollectionOptions.TrackExceptions	`true`

Note

It is recommended to use the same connection string for the server and the client.
This allows Application Insights to link together client and server logs to be able to see the full log history of an action.

Client

Every available and future options are supported. Options can be found in the Microsoft documentation.

Prefer using ConnectionString instead of InstrumentationKey.
If both options a configured, InstrumentationKey is ignored.

Neos sets default values for the following options when they are not set in the configuration :

Name	Default value
EnableAutoRouteTracking	`true`
EnableCorsCorrelation	`true`
EnableUnhandledPromiseRejectionTracking	`true`

Note

Useful options for developers

`DeveloperMode`

This optional property is quite important when debugging a cluster. It forces Application Insights to send its logs to Azure far quicker than it usually does. This avoids having to wait several minutes before logs appearing in the Application Insights repository.
It must be set to false (its default value) in production.

Displaying Application Insights stats in the C# code in Visual Studio

Visual Studio can connect to Application Insights and display stats directly in the code through code lenses.

Neos can pre-configure generated C# projects. For this, in the Server section of the Application Insights configuration of the cluster, you can set:

InstrumentationKey: Instrumentation key of the Application Insights Azure repository that contains the logs.
ResourceGroup: the name of the Azure resource group to which the Application Insights repository belongs.
ResourceName: the name of the Application Insights repository.

After generation, when opening the C# solution in Visual Studio, you will see Requests and Exceptions code lenses in your code.
The first time you click on any on them, you will need to click on the Sign-in link. If your Visual Studio account is allowed to access the Azure Portal, you will see a list of the available Application Insights repositories. Choose the one matching your project an click on OK. Now stats should appear in the code lens.

Table of Contents

Configuring Application Insights

Setting up Application Insights on a cluster for PRODUCTION

Setting up Application Insights on a cluster for DEVELOPMENT

Supported options

Before Neos 1.21

Generator

Server

Note

Client

Note

Since Neos 1.21

Generator

Server

Note

Client

Note

Useful options for developers

DeveloperMode

Displaying Application Insights stats in the C# code in Visual Studio

`DeveloperMode`