Standalone .NET Aspire dashboard

The .NET Aspire dashboard provides a great UI for viewing telemetry. The dashboard:

• Ships as a container image that can be used with any OpenTelemetry enabled app.
• Can be used standalone, without the rest of .NET Aspire.

Start the dashboard

The dashboard is started using the Docker command line.

docker run --rm -it -p 18888:18888 -p 4317:18889 -d --name aspire-dashboard \
    mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspire-dashboard:8.0.0

The preceding Docker command:

• Starts a container from the mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspire-dashboard:8.0.0 image.
• The container expose two ports:
  • Mapping the dashboard's OTLP port 18889 to the host's port 4317. Port 4317 receives OpenTelemetry data from apps. Apps send data using OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP).
  • Mapping the dashboard's port 18888 to the host's port 18888. Port 18888 has the dashboard UI. Navigate to http://localhost:18888 in the browser to view the dashboard.

Login to the dashboard

Data displayed in the dashboard can be sensitive. By default, the dashboard is secured with authentication that requires a token to login.

When the dashboard is run from a standalone container, the login token is printed to the container logs. After copying the highlighted token into the login page, select the Login button.

Tip

To avoid the login, you can disable the authentication requirement by setting the DOTNET_DASHBOARD_UNSECURED_ALLOW_ANONYMOUS environment variable to true. Additional configuration is available, see Dashboard configuration.

For more information about logging into the dashboard, see Dashboard authentication.

Explore the dashboard

The dashboard offers a UI for viewing telemetry. Refer to the documentation to explore the telemetry functionality:

• Structured logs page
• Traces page
• Metrics page

Although there is no restriction on where the dashboard is run, the dashboard is designed as a development and short-term diagnostic tool. The dashboard persists telemetry in-memory which creates some limitations:

• Telemetry is automatically removed if telemetry limits are exceeded.
• No telemetry is persisted when the dashboard is restarted.

The dashboard also has functionality for viewing .NET Aspire resources. The dashboard resource features are disabled when it is run in standalone mode. To enable the resources UI, add configuration for a resource service.

Send telemetry to the dashboard

Apps send telemetry to the dashboard using OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP). The dashboard must expose a port for receiving OpenTelemetry data, and apps are configured to send data to that address.

A Docker command was shown earlier to start the dashboard. It configured the container to receive OpenTelemetry data on port 4317. The OTLP endpoint's full address is http://localhost:4317.

Configure OpenTelemetry SDK

Apps collect and send telemetry using their language's OpenTelemetry SDK.

Important OpenTelemetry SDK options to configure:

• OTLP endpoint, which should match the dashboard's configuration, for example, http://localhost:4317.
• OTLP protocol, with the dashboard currently supporting only the OTLP/gRPC protocol. Configure applications to use the grpc protocol.

To configure applications:

• Use the OpenTelemetry SDK APIs within the application, or
• Start the app with known environment variables:
  • OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL with a value of grpc.
  • OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT with a value of http://localhost:4317.

Sample

For a sample of using the standalone dashboard, see the Standalone .NET Aspire dashboard sample app.

Next steps

Configure the .NET Aspire dashboard