.NET

Collect .NET runtime and HTTP metrics from your services and get curated dashboards and alerts for them with a single import.

.NET apps instrumented with OpenTelemetry export their metrics over OTLP to your LeanSignal agent gateway (one per cluster or environment) — never to a remote or third-party endpoint. The gateway keeps full fidelity locally and forwards only the demanded subset to your central dataplane. This integration covers the CLR runtime (GC, JIT, thread pool, memory, exceptions) plus ASP.NET Core HTTP server and HttpClient request metrics.

Metric names follow the standard OTLP → Prometheus normalization (dots become underscores, unit/_total suffixes are added), so http.server.request.duration becomes http_server_request_duration_seconds and dotnet.gc.collections becomes dotnet_gc_collections_total. The demands below are built against those names.

Prerequisites

• A LeanSignal agent gateway deployed and connected — one per cluster or environment. If you haven’t deployed it yet, follow Install the agent (source: LeanSignal/leansignal-agent). It should show as Connected under Agents in the LeanSignal app.
• Network reachability to the gateway’s OTLP port — 4317 (gRPC) or 4318 (HTTP). See Agent configuration.
• Your .NET app instrumented with the OpenTelemetry SDK, exporting metrics over OTLP to the gateway — configured in Setup.
• Editor or admin role in the LeanSignal app (importing a demand creates dashboards and alert rules).

Setup

Point your app’s OTLP exporter at your LeanSignal agent gateway (OTLP gRPC :4317 / HTTP :4318) — not a SaaS endpoint.

Option A — manual SDK (recommended for ASP.NET Core apps). Add the instrumentation packages:

dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Extensions.Hosting
dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Exporter.OpenTelemetryProtocol
dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.AspNetCore
dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.Http
dotnet add package OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.Runtime

builder.Services.AddOpenTelemetry()
    .ConfigureResource(r => r.AddService("checkout-api"))
    .WithMetrics(m => m
        .AddAspNetCoreInstrumentation()   // http.server.* (native on .NET 8+)
        .AddHttpClientInstrumentation()   // http.client.*
        .AddRuntimeInstrumentation()      // dotnet.* runtime metrics
        .AddOtlpExporter());

export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=checkout-api
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://<gateway-host>:4317
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc   # http/protobuf + :4318 for OTLP/HTTP

Option B — zero-code auto-instrumentation (no code changes; metrics on by default):

curl -sSfL https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-dotnet-instrumentation/releases/latest/download/otel-dotnet-auto-install.sh -O
sh ./otel-dotnet-auto-install.sh
. $HOME/.otel-dotnet-auto/instrument.sh
export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=checkout-api
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://<gateway-host>:4317
export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=otlp
./MyApp

.NET version and metric names

The dotnet.* runtime metric names require the built-in System.Runtime meter on .NET 9+. On .NET 8 and earlier the same OpenTelemetry.Instrumentation.Runtime package emits the older process.runtime.dotnet.* names instead (e.g. process_runtime_dotnet_gc_collections_count_total, process_runtime_dotnet_thread_pool_threads_count). If you target .NET 8, adjust the imported demand’s queries accordingly. http.server.* and http.client.* require ASP.NET Core / HttpClient instrumentation (or the auto agent); a pure worker app emits only the dotnet.* runtime metrics.

Where to send this

You have two options:

• Straight to the LeanSignal agent gateway. Point the app’s OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT at it — nothing else in between.
• Via an OpenTelemetry Collector in agent mode. Point the app at a local collector and give that collector an otlp exporter to the gateway (leansignal-agent:4317).

Both are supported — pick whichever suits your topology. A local collector tends to fit when the app has no route to the gateway (a different network or cluster), or when you want local buffering, batching, or extra processing; exporting directly means one less process to operate.

Multiple instances

Give each running instance a stable identity so replicas stay distinct: set service.instance.id, exported as the instance label — for example OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=service.instance.id=$(hostname), or your orchestrator’s pod name. The imported dashboard has an Instance filter — view all instances at once or focus on one.

Logs and traces

The .NET automatic instrumentation from Setup exports all three signals by default: with OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT set, traces and ILogger log records flow to the gateway alongside metrics. To turn a signal off, set OTEL_DOTNET_AUTO_TRACES_INSTRUMENTATION_ENABLED=false (or the LOGS twin). If you wire the SDK manually instead, add the OpenTelemetry logging provider and a TracerProvider with the same OTLP exporter. See the .NET zero-code instrumentation docs.

Demand-driven, like metrics

Logs and traces land in the gateway’s edge stores (a roughly one-hour full-fidelity window) and are queryable immediately in the LeanSignal app under Logs and Traces with the source set to Available. Nothing is stored centrally until a dashboard demands it — the ready-made demands on this page stay metrics-only. See Logs and Traces.

Demands

.NET ships as a ready-made demand in three variants. You don’t copy any JSON — in the LeanSignal app go to Demands, press the ˅ arrow on the Add Demand button (the arrow opens the import menu), choose Import from catalog…, and pick the variant. Each variant below lists the slug that identifies its published bundle. See Integrations for the full import flow.

The variants are nested — Standard is a superset of Essential, Extended a superset of Standard. Pick whichever is closest to what you need and treat it as a starting point: after import everything is a normal, editable copy, so retune thresholds, add or drop panels, and adjust queries for your environment — your edits reshape the demand automatically. Start small and re-import a larger variant later if you outgrow it.

Essential

The golden signals. 1 dashboard · 3 panels · 3 alerts — request rate, errors, and latency at a glance, plus a thread-pool starvation alert.

Import this variant from the catalog. Its demand slug:

Demand slug

dotnet-otel-demand-essential

Dashboard — HTTP request rate, HTTP 5xx error rate, and HTTP request duration p95.

Alerts (3)

Alert	Severity	Fires when
High HTTP 5xx error rate	critical	5xx ratio > 5% for 5m
High HTTP p95 latency	warning	p95 latency > 1s for 5m
Thread pool queue backlog	warning	avg queue > 100 items for 10m

Review the bundle JSON →

Standard

Well-rounded runtime coverage. 1 dashboard · 7 panels · 5 alerts — adds memory, GC, and thread-pool health. The recommended default.

Import this variant from the catalog. Its demand slug:

Demand slug

dotnet-otel-demand-standard

Dashboard — everything in Essential, plus Working set memory, GC collections by generation, Time paused in GC, and Thread pool threads.

Alerts (5)

Alert	Severity	Fires when
High HTTP 5xx error rate	critical	5xx ratio > 5% for 5m
High HTTP p95 latency	warning	p95 latency > 1s for 5m
Thread pool queue backlog	warning	avg queue > 100 items for 10m
Excessive time in GC	warning	GC pause fraction > 10% for 10m
Elevated exception rate	warning	> 10 exceptions/s for 10m

Review the bundle JSON →

Extended

Deep CLR visibility. 1 dashboard · 14 panels · 9 alerts — CPU, allocations, lock contention, and outbound HTTP for services you need to diagnose, not just watch.

Import this variant from the catalog. Its demand slug:

Demand slug

dotnet-otel-demand-extended

Dashboard — everything in Standard, plus HTTP client duration p95, CPU utilization, Exception rate, GC heap size by generation, GC heap allocation rate, Monitor lock contentions, and Thread pool queue length.

Alerts (9)

Alert	Severity	Fires when
High HTTP 5xx error rate	critical	5xx ratio > 5% for 5m
High HTTP p95 latency	warning	p95 latency > 1s for 5m
Thread pool queue backlog	warning	avg queue > 100 items for 10m
Excessive time in GC	warning	GC pause fraction > 10% for 10m
Elevated exception rate	warning	> 10 exceptions/s for 10m
Very high HTTP p99 latency	critical	p99 latency > 2.5s for 5m
Frequent gen2 garbage collections	warning	> 1 gen2 GC/s for 10m
High monitor lock contention	warning	> 50 contentions/s for 5m
High outbound HTTP error rate	warning	outbound 5xx > 10% for 5m

Review the bundle JSON →

Dashboards

Each variant imports one .NET dashboard, its panels grouped into collapsible sections. Every dashboard carries an Instance filter (on the instance label), so one import covers the whole fleet — view every instance at once, or focus on one. Legends are sortable tables showing last/mean/max per series, so the outlier instance stands out. Dashboards are demand-driven: importing one tells your agents to forward exactly the timeseries its panels query, and nothing else. Panels are ordinary Perses panels — edit queries, add panels, or retune them after import, and your changes reshape the demand automatically.

Alerts

Thresholds are conservative starting points — tune them to your workload.

Caution

Imported alert rules arrive without a notification channel and start out paused — with nowhere to deliver, they do not evaluate. After importing, create or pick a channel under Alerts → Manage Channels, attach it to each rule, and resume. Rules without a channel are marked with a warning icon in the alerts list.

Next steps

• Demand-driven observability — why importing a demand also shapes what your agents collect.
• Agent configuration — the full agent config surface.