Dedicated Monitoring for High Performing .NET Applications

by May 7, 2021

Dedicated monitoring solutions for specific platforms can provide enhanced levels of functionality over general-purpose monitors. 

When business-critical applications are involved, these differences can be a major factor in the ability of support teams to maintain performance and keep customers satisfied. 

What is the .NET Platform?

.NET, (pronounced “dot” net), is a popular open source and cross-platform developer platform that enables users to create a wide range of applications. It is a framework that allows developers to use their favorite languages, editors, and tools to build apps and games for the web, mobile devices, desktop machines, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. 

The versatility and open source nature of .NET has made it very popular in the developer community. 

Following are some of the characteristics of the platform that appeal to programmers and developers:

Increased developer productivity

Applications can be developed quickly with modern language constructs like generics, asynchronous programming, and Language Integrated Query (LINQ). Supplemental Visual Studio tools, extensive class libraries, and common APIs offer additional aids to developer productivity.

Programming language support

Developing with .NET allows users to write code in C#, F#, and Visual Basic. Supporting these three object-oriented languages lets programmers with different skill sets quickly integrate and feel comfortable with the .NET framework. 

Cross-platform capability

Developers working with the .NET framework can write code with any of the three supported programming languages that target any computing platform. 

Different .NET implementations exist to directly support the intended target. Applications can be run natively on Windows, macOS, Linux, and all major mobile operating systems. 

A consistent API is used across all implementations with additional APIs available when developing for a specific OS.

.NET delivers applications that run fast, consume less compute power, and provide better response time than many other popular frameworks. 

It is officially supported by Microsoft and has a large community of developers worldwide. Over 100,000 contributions have been made by developers to the open source framework from thousands of companies besides Microsoft.

Monitoring .NET Applications with Precise

The benefits of working with .NET have resulted in it being used in the creation of many multi-tiered and business-critical applications. 

The complex and interdependent architecture of these apps can make it difficult to isolate performance problems so they can be addressed promptly. 

Teams can easily waste time trying to find the root cause of a major SharePoint or SQL Server performance issue.

Precise for .NET is a valuable tool to help ensure applications perform optimally. It collects and analyzes multiple performance metrics from across all critical system components. 

The tool then identifies the root cause of transaction and database performance problems and corrects them before they impact users or system availability. 

The consistent user interface used for monitoring SharePoint applications, .NET, Internet Information Services (IIS), and SQL Server minimizes the tool’s learning curve. 

Precise has a low overhead while continuously and frequently collecting performance metrics. It can be accessed through a web-based console and is safe to use with mission-critical production systems.

Precise provides visibility into transaction behavior, enabling teams to identify top-consuming transactions and determining in which tier they were sending their time. Drill down capability lets the user quickly analyze and diagnose performance issues and obtain expert recommendations on resolving them.

On-premises, cloud-based, and hybrid environments can be monitored and managed from a single tool. Precise for .NET fully supports virtual machines such as Amazon EC2 and Azure VM. 

The tool can also be used with managed SQL Server cloud databases like Amazon RDS for SQL Server and Microsoft Azure SQL Database. 

Consult this datasheet for an overview of Precise for .NET.

Proven Results with Precise for .NET

A case study describing the results of using Precise indicates that the tool provided multiple benefits and helped overcome significant challenges faced by the customer. 

The company had problems with applications demonstrating inconsistent performance that impacted the end-user experience. They specifically wanted a solution that supported the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Several tangible benefits were achieved by working with Precise. They include:

  • Improved team visibility into application health and performance;
  • Improved application end-user experience;
  • Reduction in downtime, root cause identification, and mean time to resolution.

Teams can try Precise with a free 30-day trial. The benefits it can provide may be precisely what your .NET environment needs to perform at peak efficiency.