Azure Application Insights
Azure Application Insights is an extensible Application Performance Management (APM) service for developers and DevOps professionals. The Aspire Azure Application Insights integration enables you to provision Application Insights resources for collecting telemetry data from your applications.
Hosting integration
The Aspire Azure Application Insights hosting integration models the Application Insights component as the following type:
AzureApplicationInsightsResource: Represents an Azure Application Insights resource.
To access this type and APIs, add the 📦 Aspire.Hosting.Azure.ApplicationInsights NuGet package to your AppHost project.
dotnet add package Aspire.Hosting.Azure.ApplicationInsightsAdd Azure Application Insights resource
In your AppHost project, call AddAzureApplicationInsights to add and return an Azure Application Insights resource builder:
var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
var appInsights = builder.AddAzureApplicationInsights("app-insights");
builder.AddProject<Projects.ExampleProject>()
.WithReference(appInsights);
// After adding all resources, run the app...The preceding code:
- Adds an Azure Application Insights resource named
app-insightsto the application model. - Automatically creates a Log Analytics workspace to store the telemetry data.
- References the Application Insights resource in the
ExampleProject, making the connection string available.
Caution
When you call AddAzureApplicationInsights, it implicitly calls
AddAzureProvisioning—which adds support for generating Azure resources
dynamically during app startup. The app must configure the appropriate
subscription and location. For more information, see Local provisioning:
Configuration.
Use with existing Log Analytics workspace
If you have an existing Log Analytics workspace that you want to use, you can link Application Insights to it:
var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
var logAnalytics = builder.AddAzureLogAnalyticsWorkspace("log-analytics");
var appInsights = builder.AddAzureApplicationInsights("app-insights", logAnalytics);
builder.AddProject<Projects.ExampleProject>()
.WithReference(appInsights);
// After adding all resources, run the app...The preceding code:
- Adds an Azure Log Analytics workspace resource named
log-analytics. - Adds an Azure Application Insights resource named
app-insightsthat uses the specified Log Analytics workspace. - References the Application Insights resource in the
ExampleProject.
Configure Log Analytics workspace after creation
You can also configure the Log Analytics workspace using the fluent API:
var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
var logAnalytics = builder.AddAzureLogAnalyticsWorkspace("log-analytics");
var appInsights = builder.AddAzureApplicationInsights("app-insights")
.WithLogAnalyticsWorkspace(logAnalytics);
builder.AddProject<Projects.ExampleProject>()
.WithReference(appInsights);
// After adding all resources, run the app...Connection properties
The Azure Application Insights resource exposes the following connection property:
| Property name | Description |
|---|---|
appInsightsConnectionString |
The connection string for Application Insights. |
This connection string is automatically made available to referencing projects as an environment variable named APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING (or based on the resource name).
Provisioning-generated Bicep
If you're new to Bicep, it's a domain-specific language for defining Azure resources. With Aspire, you don't need to write Bicep by-hand—the provisioning APIs generate Bicep for you. When you publish your app, the generated Bicep is output alongside the manifest file. When you add an Azure Application Insights resource, the following Bicep is generated:
@description('The location for the resource(s) to be deployed.')
param location string = resourceGroup().location
param applicationType string = 'web'
param kind string = 'web'
param logAnalyticsWorkspaceId string
resource app_insights 'Microsoft.Insights/components@2020-02-02' = {
name: take('app-insights-${uniqueString(resourceGroup().id)}', 260)
kind: kind
location: location
properties: {
Application_Type: applicationType
WorkspaceResourceId: logAnalyticsWorkspaceId
}
tags: {
'aspire-resource-name': 'app-insights'
}
}
output appInsightsConnectionString string = app_insights.properties.ConnectionStringThe preceding Bicep provisions an Azure Application Insights component linked to a Log Analytics workspace for storing telemetry data.
The generated Bicep is a starting point and is influenced by changes to the provisioning infrastructure in C#. Customizations to the Bicep file directly will be overwritten, so make changes through the C# provisioning APIs to ensure they are reflected in the generated files.
Customize provisioning infrastructure
All Aspire Azure resources are subclasses of the AzureProvisioningResource type. This type enables the customization of the generated Bicep by providing a fluent API to configure the Azure resources using the ConfigureInfrastructure API. For example, you can configure the application type, retention settings, and more. The following example demonstrates how to customize the Azure Application Insights resource:
var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
var appInsights = builder.AddAzureApplicationInsights("app-insights")
.ConfigureInfrastructure(infra =>
{
var insights = infra.GetProvisionableResources()
.OfType<ApplicationInsightsComponent>()
.Single();
insights.RetentionInDays = 90;
insights.IngestionMode = ComponentIngestionMode.LogAnalytics;
insights.Tags.Add("environment", "production");
});
builder.AddProject<Projects.ExampleProject>()
.WithReference(appInsights);The preceding code:
- Chains a call to the
ConfigureInfrastructureAPI:- The
infraparameter is an instance of theAzureResourceInfrastructuretype. - The provisionable resources are retrieved by calling
GetProvisionableResources. - The
ApplicationInsightsComponentis configured with 90-day retention and a custom tag.
- The
For more information, see Customize Azure resources. For the full list of configurable properties, see the Azure.Provisioning.ApplicationInsights API documentation.
Client integration
Note
The Azure Application Insights hosting integration works with the standard Application Insights SDK and OpenTelemetry exporters. No separate Aspire client integration is required.
Configure Application Insights in your application
To use Application Insights in your application, configure the OpenTelemetry exporter in your service defaults:
public static IHostApplicationBuilder AddServiceDefaults(
this IHostApplicationBuilder builder)
{
builder.ConfigureOpenTelemetry();
// ... other configuration
return builder;
}
public static IHostApplicationBuilder ConfigureOpenTelemetry(
this IHostApplicationBuilder builder)
{
builder.Logging.AddOpenTelemetry(logging =>
{
logging.IncludeFormattedMessage = true;
logging.IncludeScopes = true;
});
builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
.WithMetrics(metrics =>
{
metrics.AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()
.AddHttpClientInstrumentation()
.AddRuntimeInstrumentation();
})
.WithTracing(tracing =>
{
tracing.AddSource(builder.Environment.ApplicationName)
.AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()
.AddHttpClientInstrumentation();
});
builder.AddOpenTelemetryExporters();
return builder;
}
private static IHostApplicationBuilder AddOpenTelemetryExporters(
this IHostApplicationBuilder builder)
{
var useOtlpExporter = !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(
builder.Configuration["OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT"]);
if (useOtlpExporter)
{
builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
.UseOtlpExporter();
}
// Application Insights will automatically pick up the connection string
// from the APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING environment variable
return builder;
}Alternatively, you can use the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry exporter directly:
builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
.UseAzureMonitor(options =>
{
options.ConnectionString = builder.Configuration
.GetConnectionString("app-insights");
});