Tracing Azure SDK for .NET

The new Azure SDK has a lot of new features that make it worth migrating from Microsoft.Azure.* to Azure.* packages. Logging is greatly improved and is consistent across client libraries. All clients will log request and response information automatically when AppInsights or OpenTelemetry is configured.

You can also enable logging manually using either ETW applications like logman.exe, or standard tracing tools like dotnet trace as shown in the example below.

Setting up

You need to set up your environment for dotnet trace. If you need to install the dotnet SDK, see https://dot.net. Once you have dotnet installed, run the following to install dotnet-trace:

dotnet tool install -g dotnet-trace

You can test your installation by running the following:

dotnet trace --help

If that doesn’t work, try restarting your terminal.

Now you need to create a simple console project:

1. Run the following commands to create the project:

   dotnet new console -o sample
   cd sample
   dotnet add package Azure.Security.KeyVault.Secrets
   dotnet add package Azure.Identity
   

2. Replace the contents of Program.cs with the following:

   using System;
   using System.Diagnostics;
   using System.Threading.Tasks;
   using Azure.Identity;
   using Azure.Security.KeyVault.Secrets;
   namespace logger
   {
       class Program
       {
           static async Task Main(string[] args)
           {
               var url = args.Length > 0 ? args[0]
                   : Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_KEYVAULT_URL")
                   ?? throw new InvalidOperationException("Azure Key Vault URL required.");
   
               using (var p = Process.GetCurrentProcess())
               {
                   Console.WriteLine("Run the following command and press Enter to continue:");
                   Console.Write("dotnet trace collect -p {0} --providers Azure-Core", p.Id);
                   Console.ReadLine();
               }
   
               var credential = new DefaultAzureCredential();
               var options = new SecretClientOptions
               {
                   Diagnostics =
                   {
                       // Set to true to log content. Default is false.
                       IsLoggingContentEnabled = true,
                   },
               };
   
               var client = new SecretClient(new Uri(url), credential, options);
   
               KeyVaultSecret secret = await client.SetSecretAsync("test-secret", "secret-value");
               Console.WriteLine(secret.Value);
           }
       }
   }
   

3. Make sure it builds by running:

   dotnet build
   

Tracing network calls

Because we’ve now built a console application you’ll need two terminals.

1. In one terminal, run:

   dotnet run -- <Key Vault URL>
   

   Unless you already have Azure credential environment variables defined, you should be prompted to authenticate using your browser and possibly a device code.

2. In the other terminal, copy, paste, and run the command output, e.g.:

   dotnet trace collect -p 1234 --providers Azure-Core
   

3. Back in the first terminal, press Enter.

This will, by default, write to trace.nettrace in the current directory. You can use tools like PerfView to view trace information, including content if you set IsLoggingContentEnabled to true as shown in the example above.

More tracing

Some other clients may trace additional details. While Azure SDK is working on improving documentation, you can browse source code for interesting client libraries in GitHub. Newer client libraries (a.k.a. “track 2”) can be found in sdk/**/Azure.* directories.