Proposal for IBM Instana Enhancement: Monitoring .NET Framework Applications on Mono in Kubernetes

Costumers that are migrating to .NET Core usually start by transitioning from IIS to Kubernetes clusters. During this migration journey, many organizations also need to maintain legacy .NET Framework applications for compatibility reasons, especially those that rely on third-party libraries or APIs not fully supported by .NET Core.

To address this gap, developers often use the Mono runtime, which enables .NET Framework applications to run on non-Windows environments, including Kubernetes. However, the current monitoring capabilities in IBM Instana lack direct support for Mono-based runtimes in containerized environments.

Key Points:

Growing Need for Hybrid Monitoring: Enterprises adopting Kubernetes for their .NET ecosystem often run a mix of .NET Core and .NET Framework (via Mono). Providing insights into Mono runtime performance would bridge the monitoring gap for hybrid environments.

Challenges Without Support:

• Lack of visibility into memory usage, garbage collection, and runtime-specific exceptions when using Mono.
• Difficulty in tracing application dependencies and performance bottlenecks in .NET Framework applications running on Kubernetes.

Proposed Enhancement for Instana:

• Extend current monitoring capabilities to detect and analyze applications running on Mono runtime within containerized environments.
• Provide runtime-specific metrics, including:
  • CPU/memory utilization.
  • Garbage collection behavior.
  • Exception tracking and detailed stack traces.
• Integration with Kubernetes for service discovery and dependency mapping of Mono-based .NET Framework workloads.

Benefits:

• Holistic Observability: Enable teams to monitor the entire .NET landscape, whether applications run on .NET Core or Mono.
• Improved Migration Experience: Simplify the transition to Kubernetes by supporting legacy workloads without sacrificing visibility.
• Competitive Differentiation: Position Instana as a leading APM solution for enterprises navigating hybrid .NET environments.

This enhancement would meet the immediate needs of many customers while paving the way for future innovation in .NET application monitoring. It aligns with Instana’s vision of providing comprehensive observability across diverse technology stacks.