.NET agent: compatibility and requirements for .NET Framework
Our .NET agent supports both .NET Framework and .NET Core. Here we describe the compatibility and support for .NET Framework applications. For .NET Core, see Compatibility and requirements for .NET Core.
The agent includes built-in instrumentation for some of the most popular parts of the .NET Framework ecosystem, including frameworks, databases, and message queuing systems. After you download and install the agent, it runs within the monitored process. The agent does not create a separate process or service.
Our .NET agent support of these framework versions will continue as is with the released versions. In a future major release, we will target .NET framework 4.6.2 onwards. For more details, including how you can easily prepare for this transition, see our Explorers Hub post.
.NET Framework 4.5 or higher
.NET Framework 4.5 or higher requires the New Relic .NET agent version 7.0 or higher.
.NET Framework 4.0 or lower
To instrument applications running on .NET Framework version 4.0 and lower, you must run a version of the New Relic .NET agent earlier than 7.0. For more information and download procedures, see Technical support for .NET frameworks 4.0 or earlier.
Here are additional details about .NET Framework versions 4.0 and lower:
.NET Framework version
Notes
.NET Framework 2.0
Unless you have installed only .NET Framework 4.0 or higher, you must have .NET Framework version 3.5 installed on the target host, in addition to any other .NET Framework versions you have installed.
.NET Framework 3.0
Unless you have installed only .NET Framework 4.0 or higher, you must have .NET Framework version 3.5 installed on the target host, in addition to any other .NET Framework versions you have installed.
.NET Framework 3.5
Fully supported by .NET agent versions below 7.0.
.NET Framework 4.0
Fully supported by .NET agent versions below 7.0.
If you use .NET Framework 1.1 for any app on your target system, you must disable instrumentation of that app with applicationPool set to instrument="false". The .NET agent can cause crashes in .NET 1.1 apps.
You must use one of these app/web servers:
IIS
Self-hosted OWIN
Self-hosted WCF
Kestrel
Kestrel with IIS reverse proxy via AspNetCoreModule
Kestrel with IIS reverse proxy via AspNetCoreModuleV2
The agent automatically creates transactions for apps hosted in IIS. If you self-host with WCF and OWIN version 3 or higher, the agent also automatically creates transactions. For other self-hosted services, you will need to create transactions via custom instrumentation.
The agent requires CLR version 4.0. Legacy applications running on CLR 2.0 can be instrumented with agent versions earlier than 7.0.
The agent requires one of these operating systems:
Windows Server 2008
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2012 R2
Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2019
Windows 10
Windows Azure (OS Family 1, 2, and 3)
Windows containers running on Windows 2016 (NanoServer based images are not supported)
The .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) only allows one profiler to access the profiling API of a process at any given time. Running our .NET agent alongside other monitoring software will result in a profiler conflict. For more information, see Errors while using other APM software.
For Azure-specific installation instructions, see:
The agent is available in both a 32-bit and 64-bit version. On 64-bit systems, the 64-bit agent can instrument both 32-bit and 64-bit applications.
Installation requires elevated privileges (Administrator). For example, you can:
Be logged in as an administrator user.
Be a member of the Administrators group.
On newer operating systems, provide elevation credentials when prompted.
The monitored process must have read/write access to the directory in which the agent is installed. The agent runs as a part of the monitored process and relies on those permissions to function.
Recommendation:
Restrict permissions for the newrelic.config file and give read/write access only to the owner of the monitored process.
Review permissions for the logs created by the agent to minimize the number of users with access and their privileges.
The use of Code Access Security is compatible with the .NET agent only when Full Trust is provided. The agent is not compatible with more restrictive trust levels.
The agent requires your firewall to allow outgoing connections to specific networks and ports.
The .NET agent uploads data at the end of each harvest cycle (once per minute). If your .NET app doesn't run that long, you can set the service element's sendDataOnExit attribute to true in the newrelic.config file.
Automatic instrumentation
If your application is hosted in ASP.NET or another fully supported framework, the .NET agent will automatically instrument your application after install. If your app is not automatically instrumented, or if you want to add instrumentation, use custom instrumentation.
The .NET agent does not directly monitor datastore processes. Also, by default the .NET SQL parameter capture in a query trace does not list parameters for a parameterized query or a stored procedure. Collection of the SQL query parameters can be enabled in the agent configuration.
The agent automatically instruments some application frameworks; we refer to these frameworks as fully supported.
Compatibility status
.NET app frameworks
Fully supported
These frameworks are fully supported:
ASP.NET MVC 2
ASP.NET MVC 3
ASP.NET MVC 4
ASP.NET MVC 5
ASP.NET Web API v2
ASP.NET Core MVC 2.0
ASP.NET Core 2.1
ASP.NET Core 2.2
ASP.NET Web Forms
Castle MonoRail v2 (not the same as Mono)
OWIN-hosted web API applications on .NET framework using:
Binding Types (both client and service)
WCF Instrumentation has been tested for the following common binding types. Varying levels of support are available for distributed tracing (DT) and cross application tracing (CAT):
Binding
Distributed Tracing (DT) Support
Cross Application Tracing (CAT) Support
BasicHTTP
supported
supported
WebHTTP
supported
supported
WSHTTP
supported
supported
NetTCP
supported
supported
NetNamedPipe
not supported*
not supported*
NetMSMQ
not supported*
not supported*
* Distributed tracing may be manually implemented using these Distributed Tracing API methods.
Invocation Methods (both client and service)
Synchronous
Asynchronous Processing Model (APM) Begin/End
Task Asynchronous Processing (TAP)
Event-based Asynchronous Processing (EAP)
Client support only.
Not fully supported
These frameworks are not fully supported:
ASP.NET Web API v1: See the troubleshooting information about using ASP.NET Web API v1 with New Relic's .NET agent 5.0 or higher for apps targeting .NET Framework 4.0. (This does not affect .NET Framework 4.5 or higher.)
Mono: New Relic does not support Mono, an open-source .NET framework that runs on Linux. This is because there is no Profiler API to inject into the .NET agent as a profiler into Mono-based .NET applications. The Profiler API is a Component Object Model (COM)-based interface and is not supported on Linux.
Not supported
Classic ASP is not supported, because the agent can only instrument .NET Framework-based apps.
Sharepoint is not supported.
Collecting instance details for supported datastores requires .NET agent version 6.5.29.0 or higher and is enabled by default. To request instance-level information from datastores not currently listed, get support at support.newrelic.com.
In order to automatically instrument the performance of .NET Framework application calls to these datastores, make sure you have the .NET agent version 8.14 or higher:
The .NET agent v9.2.0 or later automatically instruments Microsoft.Azure.Cosmos library v3.17.0 or later (v3.23.0 is the latest tested version).
Couchbase
SDK version 2.x.x (2.4.0 or higher is not supported).
With Couchbase, the following are not instrumented by default in favor of their multi-document counterparts:
Get(string key)
GetDocument(string key)
Remove(string key)
Remove(string key, ulong cas)
Upsert<T>(string key, T value)
IBM DB2
Microsoft SQL Server
MongoDB
We support both the modern and legacy MongoDB drivers.
Legacy - mongocsharpdriver
Driver versions 1.10.0 or earlier: Instance details are not available in these driver versions.
Modern - MongoDB.Driver
Driver version 2.3.x - 2.13.x: The .NET agent will support instrumenting pre-exising and new API methods in 2.6.x, but not new methods introduced in 2.7.x and higher.
MySQL
Use MySql.Data version 6.10.4 or later, or use the MySQL Connector
Oracle
PostgreSQL
Use Npgsql 4.0.
Prior versions of Npgsql may also be instrumented, but duplicate and/or missing metrics are possible.
ServiceStack.Redis
StackExchange.Redis
The agent automatically instruments these message systems:
For ASP.NET applications, the .NET agent automatically injects the browser JavaScript agent when you enable auto-instrumentation. After enabling browser injection, you can view browser data in the APM Summary page and quickly switch between the APM and browser data for a particular app. For configuration options and manual instrumentation, see Browser monitoring and the .NET agent.
Automatic browser injection is not supported for ASP.NET core applications.
When you install the Infrastructure and APM agents on the same host, they automatically detect one another. You can then view a list of hosts in the APM UI, and filter your Infrastructure hosts by APM app in the Infrastructure UI. For more information, see APM data in Infrastructure.