Docs » Supported integrations in Splunk Observability Cloud » Instrument back-end applications to send spans to Splunk APM » Instrument .NET applications for Splunk Observability Cloud (OpenTelemetry) » Instrument your .NET application for Splunk Observability Cloud (OpenTelemetry)

Instrument your .NET application for Splunk Observability Cloud (OpenTelemetry) đź”—

Note

Due to changes in the upstream OpenTelemetry documentation, “automatic instrumentation” has been changed to “zero-code instrumentation”. For more information, see Instrumentation methods for Splunk Observability Cloud.

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET automatically instruments .NET applications, Windows services running .NET applications, and ASP.NET applications deployed on IIS.

You can install the .NET instrumentation manually or using the NuGet packages. The manual instructions include the option to use a guided setup. The NuGet packages are the best method for avoiding dependency version conflicts, but are not well-suited for instrumenting multiple applications running on the same machine. Review the pre-checks and the various installation procedures on this page to identify the best installation method for your application environment.

Install the OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation using the NuGet packages đź”—

You can deploy the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation automatically using the official NuGet packages. Your instrumented application project must support NuGet packages.

NuGet package installation considerations đź”—

The following scenarios are ideal for using the NuGet packages:

  • You control the application build but not the machine or container where the application is running.

  • You’re instrumenting a self-contained application. See Publish self-contained in the .NET documentation.

  • You want to facilitate developer experimentation with zero-code instrumentation through NuGet packages.

  • You need to solve version conflicts between the dependencies used by the application and the zero-code instrumentation.

Don’t use the NuGet packages if any of the following apply to your environment:

  • You’re unable to add the NuGet packages to the application project. This can be the case when instrumenting a third-party application.

  • You can’t accommodate the increased disk use required by installing the NuGet packages separately for each instrumented application running on the same machine.

  • You need to instrument a legacy application that can’t be migrated to the SDK-style project. To verify whether your project is SDK style, see Identify the project format in the NuGet documentation.

If your scenario isn’t compatible with NuGet package installation, install the distribution manually. See Install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET manually.

Note

For advanced configuration of the .NET zero-code instrumentation, such as changing trace propagation formats or changing the endpoint URLs, see Configure the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET.

Instrument your application using the NuGet packages đź”—

To automatically instrument your application using the NuGet packages, add the Splunk.OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation package to your project.

  1. In a terminal, navigate to the root directory of your .NET application.

  2. Add the NuGet packages using the following command, replacing <project> with the .csproj file name:

    dotnet add <project> package Splunk.OpenTelemetry.AutoInstrumentation --prerelease

If the build fails and prompts you to add missing instrumentation packages, add the instrumentation package or skip the instrumentation of the listed package by adding it to the SkippedInstrumentation property. For example:

<PropertyGroup>
   <SkippedInstrumentations>MongoDB.Driver.Core;StackExchange.Redis</SkippedInstrumentations>
</PropertyGroup>

Alternatively, you can set the SkippedInstrumentation property from the terminal. Rewrite the ; separator as %3B. For example:

dotnet build -p:SkippedInstrumentations=StackExchange.Redis%3BMongoDB.Driver.Core

To distribute the appropriate native runtime components with your .NET application, specify a Runtime Identifier (RID) to build the application using dotnet build or dotnet publish. For more information, see .NET RID Catalog in the .NET documentation.

Both self-contained and framework-dependent applications are compatible with zero-code instrumentation. See .NET application publishing overview in the .NET documentation for more information.

Run the instrumented application đź”—

The instrumentation procedure in the previous section produces launch scripts in the output folder of the build. The Windows script is splunk-launch.cmd and the Linux script is splunk-launch.sh. The script passes all the command-line parameters that you provide to the application. Use the following steps to run your instrumented application:

  1. Identify the launch script in your build output.

  2. (Optional) If you want to view telemetry data output in your console to verify that instrumentation is working, add console to the value (for example OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp,console) of the following environment variables:

    • OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER

    • OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER

    • OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER

  3. Run the instrumented application using the launch script:

    • Using the executable:

      • Windows: splunk-launch.cmd <application_executable>.

      • Linux: splunk-launch.sh <application_executable>.

    • Using the dotnet CLI:

      • Windows: splunk-launch.cmd dotnet <application>.

      • Linux: splunk-launch.sh dotnet <application>.

Install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET manually đź”—

You can deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation manually, using either the guided setup or the step-by-step instructions below.

Manual installation considerations đź”—

The following scenarios are ideal for manually installing the .NET instrumentation:

  • You’re unable to add the NuGet packages to the application project. This can be the case when instrumenting a third-party application.

  • You can’t accommodate the increased disk use required by installing the NuGet packages separately for each instrumented application running on the same machine.

  • You need to instrument a legacy application that can’t be migrated to the SDK-style project. To verify whether your project is SDK style, see Identify the project format in the NuGet documentation.

Consider using the NuGet packages if any of the following apply to your environment:

  • You control the application build but not the machine or container where the application is running.

  • You’re instrumenting a self-contained application. See Publish self-contained in the .NET documentation.

  • You want to facilitate developer experimentation with zero-code instrumentation through NuGet packages.

  • You need to solve version conflicts between the dependencies used by the application and the zero-code instrumentation.

To install the distribution using the official NuGet packages, see Install the OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation using the NuGet packages.

Note

For advanced configuration of the .NET zero-code instrumentation, such as changing trace propagation formats or changing the endpoint URLs, see Configure the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET.

Generate customized instructions using the guided setup đź”—

To generate all the basic installation commands for your environment and application, use the .NET OpenTelemetry guided setup. To access the .NET OpenTelemetry guided setup, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to Splunk Observability Cloud.

  2. Open the .NET OpenTelemetry guided setup . Optionally, you can navigate to the guided setup on your own:

    1. In the navigation menu, select Data Management.

    2. Go to the Available integrations tab, or select Add Integration in the Deployed integrations tab.

    3. In the integration filter menu, select By Product.

    4. Select the APM product.

    5. Select the .NET (OpenTelemetry) tile to open the .NET OpenTelemetry guided setup.

Instrument your .NET application đź”—

If you don’t use the guided setup, follow these instructions to manually install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET:

Use the following steps to automatically instrument your application.

Warning

In .NET version 8, setting the DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics runtime environment variable to 0 deactivates all diagnostics including the CLR Profiler, which is required for launching the .NET instrumentation if you are not using .NET startup hooks. Make sure that DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics is set to 1. To limit diagnostics to only the CLR Profiler, use the following environment variable settings:

  • DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics=1

  • DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics_Profiler=1

  • DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics_IPC=0

  • DOTNET_EnableDiagnostics_Debugger=0

Windows đź”—

  1. Check that you meet the requirements. See OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation compatibility and requirements.

  2. Download and install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET from the Releases page on GitHub . For example:

    # Download and import the PowerShell module
$module_url = "https://github.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-dotnet/releases/latest/download/Splunk.OTel.DotNet.psm1"
$download_path = Join-Path $env:temp "Splunk.OTel.DotNet.psm1"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $module_url -OutFile $download_path
Import-Module $download_path

# Install the Splunk distribution using the PowerShell module
Install-OpenTelemetryCore

  3. Register the distribution according to the type of application you’re instrumenting:

    # Set up environment to start instrumentation from the current PowerShell session
Register-OpenTelemetryForCurrentSession -OTelServiceName "<your-service-name>"

  4. Set the environment and service version resource attributes:

    # Configure environment and service version for current PowerShell session
$env:OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES='deployment.environment=<envtype>,service.version=<version>'

    Run your application after setting the attribute.

    Note

    This command instruments any applications launched in the same PowerShell session. It won’t instrument applications in a different PowerShell session.

If no data appears in APM, see Troubleshoot .NET instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Note

If you need to add custom attributes to spans or want to manually generate spans and metrics, instrument your .NET application or service manually. See Manually instrument .NET applications for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Linux đź”—

  1. Check that you meet the requirements. See OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation compatibility and requirements.

  2. Download and install the installation script of the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET from the Releases page on GitHub . For example:

    curl -sSfL https://github.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-dotnet/releases/latest/download/splunk-otel-dotnet-install.sh -O
# Install the distribution
sh ./splunk-otel-dotnet-install.sh

  3. Activate the zero-code instrumentation:

    # Activate the zero-code instrumentation
. $HOME/.splunk-otel-dotnet/instrument.sh

  4. Set the environment and service version resource attributes:

    export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES='deployment.environment=<envtype>,service.version=<version>'

  5. Run your application.

If no data appears in APM, see Troubleshoot .NET instrumentation for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Note

If you need to add custom attributes to spans or want to manually generate spans, instrument your .NET application or service manually. See Manually instrument .NET applications for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Activate AlwaysOn Profiling đź”—

To activate AlwaysOn Profiling, set the SPLUNK_PROFILER_ENABLED environment variable to true.

To activate memory profiling, set the SPLUNK_PROFILER_MEMORY_ENABLED environment variable to true after activating AlwaysOn Profiling.

See Get data into Splunk APM AlwaysOn Profiling for more information. For more settings, see .NET OTel settings for AlwaysOn Profiling.

Configure the instrumentation đź”—

For advanced configuration of the .NET zero-code instrumentation, like changing trace propagation formats or changing the endpoint URLs, see Configure the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry .NET.

Database Query Performance settings đź”—

Starting from version 1.4.0, the .NET OTel instrumentation collects database queries for Database Query Performance. See Monitor Database Query Performance.

SQL statements might contain sensitive information. To configure this behavior, use the following settings as described in OpenTelemetry .NET instrumentation compatibility and requirements.

  • OTEL_DOTNET_AUTO_SQLCLIENT_SET_DBSTATEMENT_FOR_TEXT

  • OTEL_DOTNET_AUTO_ENTITYFRAMEWORKCORE_SET_DBSTATEMENT_FOR_TEXT

  • OTEL_DOTNET_AUTO_ORACLEMDA_SET_DBSTATEMENT_FOR_TEXT

For more details on enabling Database Query Performance, visit Turn on Database Query Performance.

Instrument an application running within a Docker container đź”—

An example of a Dockerfile that instruments a .NET application running inside a Docker container is available in the splunk/observability-content-contrib repository on GitHub.

Instrument Azure Web Apps đź”—

To instrument applications or services running on Azure Web Apps, see Instrument .NET Azure Web App for Splunk Observability Cloud.

Offline installation for Windows đź”—

To install the .NET zero-code instrumentation on Windows hosts that are offline, follow these steps:

  1. Download the following files from the Releases page on GitHub and copy them to the offline server:

    • Splunk.OTel.DotNet.psm1

    • splunk-opentelemetry-dotnet-windows.zip

  2. Import the PowerShell script manually by running the following command:

    # Make sure the Download path is correct

Import-Module C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\Splunk.OTel.DotNet.psm1

    When prompted, enter R for Run Once.

  3. Run the install command:

    # Make sure the Download path is correct

Install-OpenTelemetryCore -LocalPath "C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\splunk-opentelemetry-dotnet-windows.zip"

Send data directly to Splunk Observability Cloud đź”—

By default, all telemetry is sent to the local instance of the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

To bypass the OTel Collector and send data directly to Splunk Observability Cloud, set the following environment variables:

$env:SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN=<access_token>
$env:SPLUNK_REALM=<realm>

To obtain an access token, see Retrieve and manage user API access tokens using Splunk Observability Cloud.

To find your Splunk realm, see Note about realms.

Specify the source host đź”—

To override the host used by the agent, use the environment variable OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES to set your host’s name to the desired source:

$env:OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=host.name=<host_name>

Uninstall the .NET instrumentation đź”—

To deactivate and uninstall the .NET instrumentation, run the following commands:

# Run the unregister command for your situation
Unregister-OpenTelemetryForIIS
Unregister-OpenTelemetryForWindowsService
Unregister-OpenTelemetryForCurrentSession

# Uninstall OpenTelemetry for .NET
Uninstall-OpenTelemetryCore

This page was last updated on Mar 31, 2025.