Troubleshooting Application Insights Agent (formerly named Status Monitor v2)

Article
11/25/2022

When you enable monitoring, you might experience issues that prevent data collection. This article lists all known issues and provides troubleshooting examples.

Known issues

Conflicting DLLs in an app's bin directory

If any of these DLLs are present in the bin directory, monitoring might fail:

Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.dll
Microsoft.AspNet.TelemetryCorrelation.dll
System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource.dll

Some of these DLLs are included in the Visual Studio default app templates, even if your app doesn't use them. You can use troubleshooting tools to see symptomatic behavior:

PerfView:

ThreadID="7,500" 
ProcessorNumber="0" 
msg="Found 'System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource, Version=4.0.2.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc7b13ffcd2ddd51' assembly, skipping attaching redfield binaries" 
ExtVer="2.8.13.5972" 
SubscriptionId="" 
AppName="" 
FormattedMessage="Found 'System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource, Version=4.0.2.1, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=cc7b13ffcd2ddd51' assembly, skipping attaching redfield binaries"

IISReset and app load (without telemetry). Investigate with Sysinternals (Handle.exe and ListDLLs.exe):

.\handle64.exe -p w3wp | findstr /I "InstrumentationEngine AI. ApplicationInsights"
E54: File  (R-D)   C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Az.ApplicationMonitor\content\Runtime\Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.RedfieldIISModule.dll

.\Listdlls64.exe w3wp | findstr /I "InstrumentationEngine AI ApplicationInsights"
0x0000000009be0000  0x127000  C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Az.ApplicationMonitor\content\Instrumentation64\MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_x64.dll
0x0000000009b90000  0x4f000   C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Az.ApplicationMonitor\content\Instrumentation64\Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.ExtensionsHost_x64.dll
0x0000000004d20000  0xb2000   C:\Program Files\WindowsPowerShell\Modules\Az.ApplicationMonitor\content\Instrumentation64\Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensions.Base_x64.dll

PowerShell Versions

This product was written and tested using PowerShell v5.1. This module isn't compatible with PowerShell versions 6 or 7. We recommend using PowerShell v5.1 alongside newer versions. For more information, see Using PowerShell 7 side by side with PowerShell 5.1.

Conflict with IIS shared configuration

If you have a cluster of web servers, you might be using a shared configuration. The HttpModule can't be injected into this shared configuration. Run the Enable command on each web server to install the DLL into each server's GAC.

After you run the Enable command, complete these steps:

Go to the shared configuration directory and find the applicationHost.config file.

Add this line to the modules section of your configuration:

<modules>
    <!-- Registered global managed http module handler. The 'Microsoft.AppInsights.IIS.ManagedHttpModuleHelper.dll' must be installed in the GAC before this config is applied. -->
    <add name="ManagedHttpModuleHelper" type="Microsoft.AppInsights.IIS.ManagedHttpModuleHelper.ManagedHttpModuleHelper, Microsoft.AppInsights.IIS.ManagedHttpModuleHelper, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35" preCondition="managedHandler,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
</modules>

IIS Nested Applications

We don't instrument nested applications in IIS in version 1.0.

Advanced SDK Configuration isn't available.

The SDK configuration isn't exposed to the end user in version 1.0.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting PowerShell

Determine which modules are available

You can use the Get-Module -ListAvailable command to determine which modules are installed.

Import a module into the current session

If a module hasn't been loaded into a PowerShell session, you can manually load it by using the Import-Module <path to psd1> command.

Troubleshooting the Application Insights Agent module

List the commands available in the Application Insights Agent module

Run the command Get-Command -Module Az.ApplicationMonitor to get the available commands:

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------
Cmdlet          Disable-ApplicationInsightsMonitoring              0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Disable-InstrumentationEngine                      0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Enable-ApplicationInsightsMonitoring               0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Enable-InstrumentationEngine                       0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Get-ApplicationInsightsMonitoringConfig            0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Get-ApplicationInsightsMonitoringStatus            0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Set-ApplicationInsightsMonitoringConfig            0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor
Cmdlet          Start-ApplicationInsightsMonitoringTrace           0.4.0      Az.ApplicationMonitor

Determine the current version of the Application Insights Agent module

Run the Get-ApplicationInsightsMonitoringStatus -PowerShellModule command to display the following information about the module:

PowerShell module version
Application Insights SDK version
File paths of the PowerShell module

Review the API reference for a detailed description of how to use this cmdlet.

Troubleshooting running processes

You can inspect the processes on the instrumented computer to determine if all DLLs are loaded and environment variables are set. If monitoring is working, at least 12 DLLs should be loaded.

Use the Get-ApplicationInsightsMonitoringStatus -InspectProcess command to check the DLLs.
Use the (Get-Process -id {PID}).StartInfo.EnvironmentVariables command to check the environment variables. Following are the environment varibles set in the worker process or dotnet core process:

COR_ENABLE_PROFILING=1
COR_PROFILER={324F817A-7420-4E6D-B3C1-143FBED6D855}
COR_PROFILER_PATH_32=Path to MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_x86.dll
COR_PROFILER_PATH_64=Path to MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_x64.dll
MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_Host={CA487940-57D2-10BF-11B2-A3AD5A13CBC0}
MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_HostPath_32=Path to Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.ExtensionsHost_x86.dll
MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_HostPath_64=Path to Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.ExtensionsHost_x64.dll
MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_ConfigPath32_Private=Path to Microsoft.InstrumentationEngine.Extensions.config
MicrosoftInstrumentationEngine_ConfigPath64_Private=Path to Microsoft.InstrumentationEngine.Extensions.config
MicrosoftAppInsights_ManagedHttpModulePath=Path to Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.RedfieldIISModule.dll
MicrosoftAppInsights_ManagedHttpModuleType=Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.RedfieldIISModule.RedfieldIISModule
ASPNETCORE_HOSTINGSTARTUPASSEMBLIES=Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.StartupBootstrapper
DOTNET_STARTUP_HOOKS=Path to Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.StartupHook.dll