Contents tagged with WCF
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AppFabric WCF Service Template (C#)
Now available Download the AppFabric WCF Service Template C#
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WCF and AppFabric AutoStart
Autostart is a really cool feature of Windows Server AppFabric. Recently I was asked about how you can do some kind of process initialization in your code with Autostart (which the documentation implies that you can do). This led to a discussion with a number of questions that we want to address
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endpoint.tv - Troubleshooting with AppFabric
Troubleshooting applications in production is always a challenge. With AppFabric monitoring your workflows and services, you get great information about exactly what is happening, including notices about unhandled exceptions. In this episode, Michael McKeown will show you more about how you can use these features to troubleshoot problems with your applications.
Be sure to check out the AppFabric Wiki for more great tips, and to share yours as well. -
endpoint.tv - Ten Tips for Troubleshooting with the Windows Server AppFabric Dashboard
When you write the product documentation you learn all kinds of cool inside tips about how to use it. In this episode, Michael McKeown shares 10 tips for troubleshooting using the dashboard.
Be sure to check out the AppFabric Wiki for more great tips, and to share yours as well. -
Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 Refresh for Visual Studio 2010/.NET 4 RTM
Today we are pleased to announce a Beta 2 Refresh for Windows Server AppFabric. This build supports the recently released .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010 RTM versions—a request we’ve had from a number of you. Organizations wanting to use Windows Server AppFabric with the final RTM versions of .NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 are encouraged to download the Beta 2 Refresh today. Please click here for an installation guide on installing the Beta 2 Refresh. We encourage developers and IT professionals building ASP.NET applications or applications that use WCF or WF and run on IIS to download the Beta 2 Refresh and provide feedback at http://connect.microsoft.com/dublin/feedback or via our forum at http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/dublin/threads/.
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Today on http://endpoint.tv – AppFabric Dashboard Overview
AppFabric has this great new Dashboard that gives you insight into what is happening with your services and workflows. In this video, Senior Programming Writer Michael McKeown shows you what the Dashboard can do for you.
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Windows Server AppFabric Architecture
A long time ago, applications running on Windows Server were simply EXEs, where developers wrote a lot of custom code on top of the Operating System (OS) to interact with clients and other applications over the network. COM+ and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) were added to make it easier to write and host server-side applications and Internet Information Server (IIS) was added to make it easier to write and host Web applications. Application logic was typically written in native code and/or in scripts (CGI, ASP) back then.
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Uninstalling Windows Server AppFabric Beta1 after VS 10 Beta2/.Net Framework 4 Beta2 has been uninstalled or post VS 10 RC install
When VS 10 RC/.Net Framework 4 RC is installed, the previous version of VS 10 Beta2/.Net Framework 4 Beta2 is uninstalled. If you have Windows Server AppFabric Beta1 installed (Shows up as “Application Server Extensions for .NET4” on the machine that it has been installed), ideally you would uninstall AppFabric Beta1 before uninstalling VS 10 Beta2/.Net Framework 4 Beta2.
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Windows Server AppFabric Beta 2 is Available!
Read all about the new features here or just download it here.
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Troubleshooting Applications using Windows Server AppFabric
In our previous post, we discussed the topic of Monitoring Applications using Windows Server AppFabric. In this post, we will show how to use the same tools in more advanced ways to troubleshoot problems in your applications.
Introduction
The previous post introduced the AppFabric Dashboard (pictured below). As you can see, it does a good job of giving you a quick view of the state of your WCF and WF services while highlighting potential problems. The AppFabric Dashboard is the starting point for many paths that you can take while troubleshooting. We’ll explore a few of the more common paths to get you familiar with the toolset.
Tracked Events
Most troubleshooting scenarios will require users to examine event data that was captured from the problematic service at the time the problem manifested itself. The dashboard provides several ways to drill down into the relevant event data quickly.
How to Drilldown
AppFabric provides a Tracked Events View that displays event data within IIS manager. This view lets users customize the query that is sent to the monitoring database using common filters. From the dashboard, you can use the Tracked Events Action to see the latest events that have been tracked, and then customize your query. Alternatively, you can click on any of the metrics displayed in the WCF Call History and WF Instance History sections, and a pre-created query will be used to save you time. For example, you could click the Exceptions metric and the resulting query would just show event data that contains exception information.
Using the Main Event List Pane
The main pane within the Tracked Events View displays a table of events that match the current query. The sortable columns in the table provide a high level summary of what the events mean. You can also right click rows in the table to get a context menu that provides useful tasks such as relating an event to a tracked Workflow instance. This is useful when you want to get events from an operation that spanned multiple services, maybe even different machines, as long as they are sharing the same monitoring database.
Using the Details Pane
When an event is selected in the main pane, the Details Pane at the bottom of the view displays information that was captured with the selected event. This includes custom event properties, environment information, tracked variables (for Workflow Services), and Error details (if applicable).
Using the Query Summary
As mentioned earlier, the query that is used to retrieve event data from the monitoring database can be customized. You would do this using the Query Summary control at the top of the Tracked Events View. Using this control, you can filter by several common criteria such as Emit Time, Event Type, End To End Activity Id, and Tracked Variables (Workflow only).
Monitoring Configuration
AppFabric provides a default monitoring configuration that is sufficient for common health monitoring and basic troubleshooting tasks. Sometimes, a more granular level of event data is required to troubleshoot a problem. AppFabric provides a UI tool that lets you modify the monitoring configuration that is stored in web.config files.
Changing the Monitoring Level
From any scope in the IIS hierarchy (Server, Web Site, Application), select the Configure action from within the .NET 4 WCF and WF Action section and then select the Monitoring tab. You can then choose from one of the 5 predefined monitoring levels.
· Off* – No event data is collected
