.NET Core Compatibility Requirements
The .NET Tracer supports all .NET-based languages (for example, C#, F#, Visual Basic). It has beta support for trimmed apps.
The .NET Tracer is open source. For more information, see the .NET Tracer repository.
Supported .NET Core runtimes
The .NET Tracer supports automatic instrumentation on the following .NET Core versions. It also supports .NET Framework.
| Version | Microsoft End of Life | Support level | Package version |
|---|
| .NET 8 | | GA | latest (>= 2.42.0) |
| .NET 7 | | GA | latest (>= 2.20.0) |
| .NET 6 | | GA | latest (>= 2.0.0) |
| .NET 5 | 05/10/2022 | GA | latest (>= 2.0.0) |
| .NET Core 3.1 | 12/13/2022 | GA | latest |
| .NET Core 2.1 | 08/21/2021 | GA | latest |
| .NET Core 3.0 | 03/03/2020 | EOL | Not recommended |
| .NET Core 2.2 | 12/23/2019 | EOL | Not recommended |
| .NET Core 2.0 | 10/01/2018 | EOL | Not recommended |
Additional information can be found within Microsoft’s .NET Core Lifecycle Policy, End of life APM .NET Core versions, and in Runtime support policy for .NET Core APM.
Supported processor architectures
The .NET Tracer supports automatic instrumentation on the following architectures:
| Processor architectures | Support level | Package version |
|---|
Windows x86 (win-x86) | GA | latest |
Windows x64 (win-x64) | GA | latest |
Linux x64 (linux-x64) | GA | latest |
Alpine Linux x64 (linux-musl-x64) | GA | latest |
Linux ARM64 (linux-arm64) | GA | .NET 5+ only, added in version 1.27.0 |
Integrations
The latest version of the .NET Tracer can automatically instrument the following libraries:
| Framework or library | NuGet package | Integration Name |
|---|
| ADO.NET | All AdoNet integrations | AdoNet |
| Aerospike | Aerospike.Client 4.0.0+ | Aerospike |
| ASP.NET Core | Microsoft.AspNetCoreMicrosoft.AspNetCore.App2.0+ and 3.0+ | AspNetCore |
| Azure Functions | Microsoft.Azure.Webjobs 3.0+ | AzureFunctions |
| Amazon DynamoDB | AWSSDK.DynamoDBv2 3.0+ | AwsDynamoDb |
| Amazon Kinesis | AWSSDK.Kinesis 3.0+ | AwsKinesis |
| Amazon SNS | AWSSDK.SNS 3.0+ | AwsSns |
| Amazon SQS | AWSSDK.SQS 3.0+ | AwsSqs |
| CosmosDb | Microsoft.Azure.Cosmos 3.6.0+ | CosmosDb |
| Couchbase | CouchbaseNetClient 2.2.8+ | Couchbase |
| Elasticsearch | Elasticsearch.Net 5.3.0+ | ElasticsearchNet |
| GraphQL .NET | GraphQL 2.3.0+ | GraphQL |
| gRPC | Grpc.Net.Client2.30.0+ (.NET Core 3.0+ only)Grpc.Core 2.30.0+Grpc.AspNetCore 2.30.0+ | Grpc |
| HotChocolate | HotChocolate 11.0.0+ | HotChocolate |
| HttpClient / HttpMessageHandler | System.Net.Http 4.0+ | HttpMessageHandler |
| Kafka | Confluent.Kafka 1.4+ | Kafka |
| IBM MQ | amqmdnetstd 9.0.0+ | IbmMq |
| MongoDB | MongoDB.Driver.Core 2.1.0+ | MongoDb |
| MySql | MySql.Data 6.7.0+MySqlConnector 0.61.0+ | MySql |
| Oracle | Oracle.ManagedDataAccess 4.122.0+ | Oracle |
| PostgreSQL | Npgsql 4.0+ | Npgsql |
| Process | "System.Diagnostics.Process" 4.0+ | Process |
| RabbitMQ | RabbitMQ.Client 3.6.9+ . | RabbitMQ |
| Redis (ServiceStack client) | ServiceStack.Redis 4.0.48+ | ServiceStackRedis |
| Redis (StackExchange client) | StackExchange.Redis 1.0.187+ | StackExchangeRedis |
| Service Fabric Remoting | Microsoft.ServiceFabric.Services.Remoting 4.0.470+ | ServiceRemoting |
| SQLite | System.Data.Sqlite 2.0.0+Microsoft.Data.Sqlite 1.0.0+ | Sqlite |
| SQL Server | System.Data 4.0.0+System.Data.SqlClient 4.0.0+Microsoft.Data.SqlClient 1.0.0+ | SqlClient |
| WebClient / WebRequest | System.Net.Requests 4.0+ | WebRequest |
Don’t see the library you’re looking for? First, check if the library produces observability data compatible with OpenTelemetry (for example, activity based tracing). If not, Datadog is continually adding additional support. Check with the Datadog team for help.
OpenTelemetry based integrations
Some libraries provide built in Activity based tracing. This is the same mechanism the OpenTelemetry project relies on. By setting DD_TRACE_OTEL_ENABLED to true, the .NET tracer will automatically resurface traces provided by the libraries themselves. This is possible since version 2.21.0. Here are a list of libraries that are tested with this setup (more libraries provide such tracing though, they aren’t yet expliciitly tested).
| Framework or library | NuGet package | Integration Name | Specific instructions |
|---|
| Azure Service Bus | Azure.Messaging.ServiceBus 7.14.0+ | AzureServiceBus | See Azure SDK section below |
Azure SDK
Azure SDK provides built-in OpenTelemetry support. Enable it by setting the AZURE_EXPERIMENTAL_ENABLE_ACTIVITY_SOURCE environment variable to true or by setting the Azure.Experimental.EnableActivitySource context switch to true in your application code. See Azure SDK documentation for more details.
End of life .NET Core versions
The .NET Tracer works on .NET Core 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, and 3.0, but these versions reached their end of life and are no longer supported by Microsoft. See Microsoft’s support policy for more details. Datadog recommends using the latest patch version of .NET Core 3.1, .NET 5, .NET 6, or .NET 7. Older versions of .NET Core may encounter the following runtime issues when enabling automatic instrumentation:
| Issue | Affected .NET Core Versions | Solution | More information |
|---|
| JIT Compiler bug on Linux/x64 | 2.0.x,2.1.0-2.1.11,2.2.0-2.2.5 | Upgrade .NET Core to the latest patch version, or follow steps in the linked issue | DataDog/dd-trace-dotnet/issues/302 |
Resource lookup bug with a non en-US locale | 2.0.0 | Upgrade .NET Core to 2.0.3 or above | dotnet/runtime/issues/23938 |
Supported Datadog Agent versions
| Datadog Agent version | Package version |
|---|
| 7.x | Latest |
| 6.x | Latest |
| 5.x | Latest |
Runtime support policy for .NET Core APM
Datadog APM for .NET Core depends on the host operating system, .NET Core runtime, certain .NET Core libraries, and the Datadog Agent/API. These third party software systems support specific versions of .NET Core. When the external software no longer supports a version of .NET Core, Datadog APM for .NET Core also limits its support for that version.
Levels of support
| Level | Support provided |
|---|
| Unsupported | No implementation. Contact customer support for special requests. |
| Beta | Initial implementation. May not yet contain all features. Support for new features, bug & security fixes provided on a best-effort basis. |
| General Availability (GA) | Full implementation of all features. Full support for new features, bug & security fixes. |
| Maintenance | Full implementation of existing features. Does not receive new features. Support for bug & security fixes only. |
| End-of-life (EOL) | No support. |
Package versioning
Datadog APM for .NET Core practices semantic versioning.
Version updates imply the following changes to runtime support:
- Major version updates (for example
1.0.0 to 2.0.0) may change support for any runtime from Beta/GA to Maintenance/EOL. - Minor version updates (for example
1.0.0 to 1.1.0) won’t lower the level of support for one runtime but may add support for one. - Patch version updates (for example
1.0.0 to 1.0.1) will not change support for any runtime.
Further reading
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
