Building Web Application for Monitoring (ASP.NET Web Events, WMI, Performance Counters)

Customizing Event Analysis:

After deployment to make the life of administrators easy, ASP.NET provides the following facilities:

* Monitor Live ASP.NET Application individually or across Web Farm.

* Diagnose an application that appears to be failing.

* Log events which are not exception but useful for investigation.

Ways to notify Administrator about the errors:

Through Event Log, E-Mail notification, Event stored in database.

Other helpful events could be:

1. Starting or Ending a Web Application

2. Successful and unsuccessful authentication attempts

3. ASP.NET errors

4. Custom Application Events

In ASP.NET All Errors and Failure Audits events are enabled.

Other ASP.NET Event Providers and Web Events are:

ASP.NET Event Provider:

Event Provider	Description
EventLogWebEventProvider	Writes Web event data to the Windows event log. By default, this provider is configured to write all errors to the Windows event log. Security operation errors are logged under the event name Failure Audits and all other errors are logged under the event name All Errors.
SqlWebEventProvider	Logs Web event data to a Microsoft SQL Server database. By default, this provider logs data to the SQL Server Express database in the Web application’s App_Data folder.
WmiWebEventProvider	Passes Web events to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), converting them to WMI events.
SimpleMailWebEventProvider and TemplatedMailWebEventProvider	Sends an e-mail message when Web events are raised.
TraceWebEventProvider	Passes event data to the ASP.NET page tracing system. You can use the events to debug an application and perform capacity and performance analysis.

 

To create Custom Event Providers inherit from WebEventProvider or BufferedWebEventProvider. For more details on Provider Visit:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/ms228095.aspx

ASP.NET Web Events

 

Health monitoring process using WMI:

Configuring Health-Monitoring Events:

Health Monitoring is configured in web.config and have the following major elements:

<bufferModes>:Events may raise in a frequent manner causing web application to remain busy in Health-Monitoring. <bufferModes> allows Health-Monitoring Events to be processed and dispatched in batches.

<provider>: By default it contains EventLogProvider, LocalSqlServer, WmiWebEventProvider. SimpleMailWebEventProvider, TemplatedMailWebEventProvider can be also configured.

<profiles>: It defines how many times an event can occur in specified time. Default (prevents more than once in a minute) and Critical (See every event that occur) are available by default.

<rules>: Associates Events with EventProviders. By Default All Errors and FailureAudits à EventLogProvider.

<eventMappings>: Associates event name with the class that implements them. All Errors ß WebBaseEvent and Failure Audits ß WebFailureAuditEvent.

Sample

  <healthMonitoring heartbeatInterval="0" enabled="true">

    <bufferModes>

      <add name="Critical Notification"

      maxBufferSize="100"

      maxFlushSize="20"

      urgentFlushThreshold="1"

      regularFlushInterval="Infinite"

      urgentFlushInterval="00:01:00"

      maxBufferThreads="1" />

      <add name="Notification"

      maxBufferSize="300"

      maxFlushSize="20"

      urgentFlushThreshold="1"

      regularFlushInterval="Infinite"

      urgentFlushInterval="00:01:00"

      maxBufferThreads="1" />

    </bufferModes>

    <providers>

      <add

      name="EventLogProvider"

      type="System.Web.Management.EventLogWebEventProvider,System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />

      <add

      ConnectionStringName="LocalSqlServer"

      maxEventDetailsLength="1073741823"

      buffer="false"

      bufferMode="Notification"

      name="SqlWebEventProvider"

      type="System.Web.Management.SqlWebEventProvider,System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" />

    </providers>

    <profiles>

      <add

      name="Default"

      minInstances="1"

      maxLimit="Infinite"

      minInterval="00:01:00"

      custom="" />

      <add

      name="Critical"

      minInstances="1"

      maxLimit="Infinite"

      minInterval="00:00:00"

      custom="" />

    </profiles>

    <rules>

      <add

      name="All Errors Default"

      eventName="All Errors" provider="EventLogProvider"

      profile="Default"

      minInstances="1"

      maxLimit="Infinite"

      minInterval="00:01:00"

      custom="" />

      <add

      name="Failure Audits Default"

      eventName="Failure Audits"

      provider="EventLogProvider"

      profile="Default"

      minInstances="1"

      maxLimit="Infinite"

      minInterval="00:01:00"

      custom="" />

    </rules>

    <eventMappings>

      <add

      name="All Events"

      type="System.Web.Management.WebBaseEvent,System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"

      startEventCode="0"

      endEventCode="2147483647" />

      <add

      name="All Errors"

      type="System.Web.Management.WebBaseErrorEvent,System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"

      startEventCode="0"

      endEventCode="2147483647" />

      <add

      name="All Audits"

      type="System.Web.Management.WebAuditEvent,System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"

      startEventCode="0" endEventCode="2147483647" />

      <add

      name="Failure Audits"

      type="System.Web.Management.WebFailureAuditEvent, System.Web,Version=2.0.0.0,Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"

      startEventCode="0"

      endEventCode="2147483647" />

    </eventMappings>

  </healthMonitoring>

Providing Custom Performance Counters:

With .Net 2.0 Developers can easly add custom performance counter and to Update Performance data from within your code.

Monitoring Performace Counters:

First Create Performance Counter and provide it with useful data.

PerformanceCounter pc = new PerformanceCounter( “ASP.NET”, “Requests Queued”);

lblQueued.Text = pc.RawValue.ToString();

To view performance open performance Dialog from:

Administrative Tools | Performance

To Add Performace Counter from UI Go to Server Explorer, Expand the Node R.Click the “Performance Counter” And select New Category. Provide name and description. Click Add. Now Add counters to category.

It’s better to add Counters Programmaticlly during Setup.

Adding Custom Performance Counter Catogries:

Performance Counter can be added to Existing categories, It’s recommended to define a newer category specific to application.

To create a Performance Counter Category with a single counter:

PerformanceCounterCategory.Create(“CategoryName”, “CounterHelp”, PerformanceCounterCategoryType.MultiInstance, “CounterName”, “CounterHelp”);

To Add multiples counters to a single category Use CounterCreationDataCollection class.

Providing Performance Counter Data:

Performance Data is sampled over 400 Miliiseconds. Update the Performance counter data when changes occur.

To Update Data create Performance Counter as you are reading it but specify False for ReadOnly property.

PerformanceCounter pc = new PerformanceCounter( “MyAppCountries”, “Sales”, false);

Pc.RawValue = 7;

Pc.Decrement();

Pc.Increment();

Pc.IncrementBy(3);

Pc.DecrementBy(3);