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I'm looking for a Health Monitoring / Logging Server for .net that will make it easier to monitor applications (primarily web applications). As a developer, I generally don't have access to the production app/web server or database. This makes it very difficult to get access to local log files, windows event logs, or wmi.

I'm primarily using log4net at the moment, which is nice for logging, but I've not found a good way to use it to easily trace events or to answer questions like How many users failed to login more than twice? or given that A.B() calls C.D(), which calls E.F() if E.F() throws an Exception, what was passed to A.B()?

I've been Googling around and have found some tools, but they only offer short trials (SmartInspect, SolarWinds). I'd like to be able to play with a tool for several months before trying to convince the powers that be to invest in a tool. Not to mention it would be nice to have a tool I could use at work as well on small personal projects.

Any ideas?

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I'd check out New Relic which can monitor performance of web sites, breaking down response times by:-

  • client rendering
  • network latency
  • clr processing
  • and SQL queries.

It supports ASP.NET and PHP. As well as Application monitoring it also has server monitoring tools which monitor utilisation of...

  • Disk
  • Memory
  • CPU
  • Network

It can also send out alerts when utilisation exceeds configured limits. The monitoring agent's are easy to install and configure.

I've not used...

However I believe they offer very similar solutions. All three function as SaaS, meaning the monitoring agents need to send data to a cloud based system, which may be an issue if you require a self hosted solution.

There's a good list of alternatives here all documented with features they offer.

EDIT: There are log4net appenders available for...

Out of those three it looks as though the first two are community developed whilst stackify has produced it's appender.

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  • I've heard of New Relic, and it seems great for monitoring general application health. But does it include a framework for me to extend so I can answer questions like how many users failed to login more than twice?
    – ppittle
    Jul 29, 2015 at 1:45
  • I've not used it for such things. However there's an extensive API... docs.newrelic.com/docs/apis I would have thought your best bet for such specific business logic would be log4net and an appender that works in your deployment environment e.g. SmtpAppender appender
    – Mick
    Jul 29, 2015 at 1:50
  • I made an edit to my answer to include mention of log4net appenders for each of the monitoring tools listed. That should take you one step closer to your solution.
    – Mick
    Jul 29, 2015 at 2:12

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