Announcing IISConfigurator v0.1 (replacement for Status Monitor)

[TimothyMothra]

Hello,
I’ve just published v0.1-alpha of IISConfigurator. This is our replacement for StatusMonitor.

I’ve organized all our docs for the IISConfigurator here: https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-Home/blob/master/Samples/IISConfigurator/TOC.md
This includes:

• A Quick Start Guide
• Detailed getting started instructions
• API reference for the new PowerShell Module
• A page dedicated to Troubleshooting and Known Issues

Disclaimer: This is a prototype application. We do not recommend using this on your production environments.
Please pay close attention to the known issues.
Your apps may have issues if they include any of the following DLLs in the bin directory:

• Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.dll
• Microsoft.AspNet.TelemetryCorrelation.dll
• System.Diagnostics.DiagnosticSource.dll
   

I am very interested in your feedback!
Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any issues or comments.
Specifically,

• I would love to hear about your experiences getting started
• And what you would like to see moving forward

Edit 4/09/2019 - New releases are paused
I previously committed to a new version every two weeks.
I've run into an issue internally that is blocking me from keeping up this release schedule.
Rest assured that development of new features is still on schedule.
I'm sorry for this delay and I will resume deployments as soon as this situation is resolved.
Thank you for your patience.

Edit 4/10/2019 - Update
Internal issues are almost resolved. I expect I can resume deployments by Friday 4/12!
Thank you for your continued patience.

[tsahi]

Why PowerShell? Would there be a GUI for this?

[bogdangrigg]

This sounds potentially very useful - when would GA be planned?
Also, are you targeting feature parity with the embedded SDK option?

[jawn]

We expect our first Stable release sometime in May 2019.

From https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-Home/blob/master/Samples/IISConfigurator/TOC.md

[TimothyMothra]

@tsahi We don't currently have plans for a new GUI but we will listen to customer's needs. If there's a specific feature of the GUI that you depend on, please share your use case so we can take that into consideration. :) Right now our focus is delivering a fully functional PowerShell API. This will address the automation needs of our largest enterprise customers.

@bogdangrigg Sometime in May 2019. :) This product uses the .NET SDK so you would receive the features and bug/performance fixes of this SDK.

[jmoore4xrx]

Thanks. I am not looking for GUI per se. Just found it odd that the custom Log I created did not show in current Advanced Settings > Data > Custom Logs list. I’d prefer the PowerShell API. Is there an outlook for this? Can I sing up for notification of release? Thanks again, JAM/John A. Moore From: Timothy Mothra <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2019 1:04 PM To: Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-Announcements <[email protected]> Cc: Subscribed <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-Announcements] Announcing IISConfigurator v0.1 (replacement for Status Monitor) (#21) @tsahi<https://github.com/tsahi> We don't currently have plans for a new GUI but we will listen to customer's needs. If there's a specific feature of the GUI that you depend on, please share your use case so we can take that into consideration. :) Right now our focus is delivering a fully functional PowerShell API. This will address the automation needs of our largest enterprise customers. @bogdangrigg<https://github.com/bogdangrigg> Sometime in May 2019. :) This product uses the .NET SDK<https://github.com/Microsoft/ApplicationInsights-dotnet> so you would receive the features and bug/performance fixes of this SDK. — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#21 (comment)>, or mute the thread<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ASwdWknd7vou1ORdllHDnf8lW69FUXTqks5va6RngaJpZM4cMGEg>.

[TimothyMothra]

@jmoore4xrx I will continue to make announcements on this repo.

[tsahi]

@MS-TimothyMothra we have only a few servers we maintain, so we don't use automation for deployment of App Insights. In this scenario, it's easier to use a GUI than memorize console commands.

[TimothyMothra]

@tsahi Thanks for the information. How often do you re-deploy Application Insights to your few servers?

The former Status Monitor would instrument individual applications by dropping DLLs into the bin directory. This required a re-install every time you re-deploy your original application.

The newer IIS Configurator will install once on your server to instrument IIS. Your applications will light up even after re-deploying. I hope that this newer version would create less maintenance for you overall. :)

Your feedback here is super valuable. Thank you!

[jawn]

The newer IIS Configurator will install once on your server to instrument IIS. Your applications will light up even after re-deploying. I hope that this newer version would create less maintenance for you overall.

Thanks, that's a super improvement to support CI/CD scenarios without headaches 👍.

[jawn]

Question: the docs say

This is a prototype application. We do not recommend using this on your production environments.

Will that disclaimer be removed once it is stable?

[TimothyMothra]

@jawn Yes, we will remove that disclaimer with our first stable release.
Part of our requirements for a stable release is a security review.

We are confident that the code is safe because this code base is shared with some Azure Extensions that are already live in production. This difference here is because of the on-prem scenario and we can't control the security of the installation folder. The next best thing is to review that we're not exposing you to harm.

[tsahi]

@MS-TimothyMothra that's not the experience we've had. We installed Status Monitor once, enabled it for the applications we needed on the machine, and it just works. We integrated the App Insights SDK into our application, and write logs from our code. We added status monitor because of this page (or a similar one), to get the extra data the SDK doesn't provide. I think the note above the table didn't exist at the time. We do get detailed dependency information though.

[TimothyMothra]

@tsahi. Thanks for sharing, that's perfect.
In the background, StatusMonitor was installing an extension called Instrumentation Engine.
In the v0.2 update, we're introducing an api to install only that Instrumentation Engine and nothing else. This standalone installation wasn't available in Status Monitor.