Tricks for Configuring New Relic for .NET Core

New Relic is a performance monitoring tool well known by the microservices community. It supports a lot of platforms, but it's support for .NET Core is still recent. In this post, I'll walk you through how to configure a .NET Core 2 Web API to send metrics to New Relic from a Docker container inside an Azure Web App for Containers.

To follow this tutorial, you'll need a New Relic account and a valid New Relic license key. You will also need Docker and .NET Core 2 configured and running in you development machine, a Docker Hub account, and an Azure subscription.

Creating the Web API

Let's start by creating a new Web API. In this demo, I will name  our API baseline-demo.

In the baseline-demo project folder, type:

dotnet new api

This command will scaffold our API.

Now, let's add Swagger to this API to give us a UI to test it:

dotnet add package Swashbuckle.AspNetCore
dotnet add package Swashbuckle.AspNetCore.SwaggerUI

Next, change your Startup.cs file to set up the Swashbuckle middleware:

public class Startup
{
    public Startup(IConfiguration configuration)
    {
        Configuration = configuration;
    }

    public IConfiguration Configuration { get; }

    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {
        services.AddMvc();
        services.AddSwaggerGen(c =>
        {
            c.SwaggerDoc("v1", new Info { Title = "My API", Version = "v1" });
        });
    }

    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env)
    {
        if (env.IsDevelopment())
        {
            app.UseDeveloperExceptionPage();
        }

        app.UseMvc();
        app.UseSwagger();
        app.UseSwaggerUI(c =>
        {
            c.SwaggerEndpoint("/swagger/v1/swagger.json", "My API V1");
        });
    }
}

Run the API and test it using the Swagger UI:

dotnet run

http://localhost:5000/swagger

Adding Docker and New Relic

Now let's look at how to add Docker and New Relic. First, download the New Relic .NET Core agent. In this demo, we'll use the Debian version.

http://download.newrelic.com/dot_net_agent/core_20/current

Copy the file newrelic-netcore20-agent*.deb to the folder baseline-demo/newrelic.

In the folder baseline-demo, create a DOCKERFILE with the following content:

FROM microsoft/dotnet:2.0.0-sdk-2.0.2-stretch

ENV CORECLR_ENABLE_PROFILING="1" \
CORECLR_PROFILER="{36032161-FFC0-4B61-B559-F6C5D41BAE5A}" \
CORECLR_NEWRELIC_HOME="/usr/local/newrelic-netcore20-agent" \
CORECLR_PROFILER_PATH="/usr/local/newrelic-netcore20-agent/libNewRelicProfiler.so" \
NEW_RELIC_LICENSE_KEY="YOUR_LICENSE_KEY" \
NEW_RELIC_APP_NAME="baseline-demo"

WORKDIR /app

ARG runtimeIdentifier=debian-x64
ARG files=./bin/Release/netcoreapp2.0/$runtimeIdentifier/publish
COPY $files ./appcode

ARG NewRelic=./newrelic
COPY $NewRelic ./newrelic

RUN dpkg -i ./newrelic/newrelic-netcore20-agent*.deb

ENV ASPNETCORE_URLS http://+:5000
EXPOSE 5000

WORKDIR /app/appcode
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "./baseline-demo.dll"]

Now, publish your API targeting debian-x64:

dotnet publish -c Release -r debian-x64

And build a docker image with the published content:

docker build . -t baseline-demo

Now, simply run your container:

docker run -itp 5000:5000 -rm baseline-demo

Go to Swagger and make some GET requests.

In a few minutes, you should see some metrics under your account in New Relic. They will appear as follows:

Publishing the Container to Docker Hub

On your Docker Hub portal, create a new repository and give it the same name as your Docker image.

Then, tag the local image to match this Docker Hub repository, like this:

docker tag baseline-demo rafaelromao/baseline-demo

Log in to your Docker Hub account and push the local image to the repository:

docker login
docker push rafaelromao/baseline-demo:latest

Now your image will be available for use in an Azure Web App for Containers.

Running Your Web API Container on Azure

Finish the creation and access the /swagger endpoint in the URL provided for your app and make some test requests.

https://baseline-demo.azurewebsites.net/swagger

Now go to New Relic again to see the metrics collected from your API, which is now running on Azure.

Conclusion

This short tutorial shows one of the many options available for configuring New Relic for a .NET Core 2 Web API. For more information, check out New Relic's documentation. Don't forget to comment below to tell us what you think about the amazing tools we used in this demo!