Profiler chaining for the .NET Core agent

You can use profiler chaining to run the .NET Core agent alongside another .NET Core APM profiler.

The Contrast .NET Core agent is tested and proven to be compatible with the following profiling tools, given the combination of runtime, deployment type, and OS:

Profiling tool

Versions tested

.NET Core runtime

Third-party profiler deployment type

OS

Dynatrace One Agent

1.193.159.20200602-190835

3.1

Installed

Windows Server 2019

New Relic (see example)

8.23.107

3.1

NuGet Package

Windows Server 2019

Note

The agent is likely compatible with other profiling tools if those tools follow the conventions of the CoreCLR Profiling API and do not make assumptions about the profiling environment.

IIS

  1. Install the third-party agent, then the Contrast .NET Core agent.

    Note

    You must use the installed agent, not the manual agent.

    Dynatrace chaining is only supported for installed IIS agent.

  2. Enable profiler chaining, configure the .NET Core agent so that the agent.dotnet.enable_chaining setting is set to true. For example, you could use this YAML configuration:

    agent: 
    dotnet: 
        enable_chaining: true

  3. Once configured, you must restart the agent. On restart, the Contrast .NET Core agent automatically detects the presence of other profiling tools registered with IIS and configures the environment to load both the Contrast .NET Core agent profiler and the third-party profiler.

Outside of IIS

The agent.dotnet.enable_chaining configuration flag will not work if you are using profiler chaining for applications:

  • hosted outside of IIS, or

  • that use the third-party agent's Nuget package (rather than the installed agent).

  1. Replace the CLR environment variables for the profiling tool with CONTRAST_CCC_COR versions. Any of these names should be transformed:

    Change this

    To this

    COR_PROFILER 

    CONTRAST_CCC_COR_PROFILER

    COR_PROFILER_PATH

    CONTRAST_CCC_COR_PROFILER_PATH

    COR_PROFILER_PATH_32

    CONTRAST_CCC_COR_PROFILER_PATH_32

    COR_PROFILER_PATH_64

    CONTRAST_CCC_COR_PROFILER_PATH_64

  2. Make the necessary changes in your APM profiler. Here are examples for New Relic.

In this section: