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Release Notes

Prerequisites for the Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature

This page describes the prerequisites for installing, configuring and running the Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature.

The Logging solutions involves 2 parts:

  1. WCF Diagnostics (involves changes on server with WCF Applications)
  2. Pickup Log Events Service Logging Agent (must be installed and have access to folders)
graph LR subgraph "WCF Enabled Application" roWCFApplication(fal:fa-globe WCF Application)--> roWCFTracing(fal:fa-bolt WCF Diagnostic Tracing
Configuration file
Nodinite DLL files ) roFolder(fal:fa-folder Folder) roWCFTracing --> roFolder end subgraph "Nodinite Server" roPS(fal:fa-truck-pickup Pickup Service) roFolder --> |SMB| roPS end

Log Events and Payload

You must have at least one existing IIS/WCF based solution that you must eventually configure to emit JSON formatted Log Events to a file folder for pickup by the Nodinite Pickup Log Events Service Logging Agent.

Verified Topic
Software Requirements
What Windows User Rights does the WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature require?
What firewall settings does the Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature require?

Software Requirements

You need the following components:

  1. Your WCF Application
  2. Windows Server
  3. .NET Framework
  4. Pickup Service

Supported Versions

The Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature can be used on the following list of Windows Server/ IIS versions

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 (IIS 7.5)
  • Windows Server 2012 (IIS 8.0)
  • Windows Server 2012 R2 (IIS 8.5)
  • Windows Server 2016 R2 (IIS 10)

All Windows Server editions are supported:

  • Enterprise
  • Standard
  • Developer (which is Enterprise)
  • Trial (which is Enterprise)

.NET Framework

  • .NET Framework 4.5 or later

Pickup Service

The Pickup Log Events Service Logging Agent must be installed and configured to pickup the log files from configured WCF Solutions. The Windows Service may be installed on any other Windows Server, as long as the emitted log files can be consumed (logged).

See Prerequisites for Pickup Service for additional details

Log API

The LogAPI must be installed and accessible from the Pickup Log Events Service Logging Agent.

See Prerequisites for Log API for additional details

What Windows User Rights does the WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature require?

The AppPool On the Windows Server hosting the WCF Application runs with some Windows Identity. The WCF Diagnostics Logging feature requires the AppPool account to have the right to write files to configured destination folder (local or remote).

You must also have the rights to change .config files on the server hosting your WCF Applications.

We at Nodinite strongly recommends that you log to a local folder or a highly available file share to avoid any problems within your WCF Application. Local access is more likely to be available and performs faster writes which means less overhead within your solution

What firewall settings does the Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature require?

This depends on your configuration, if the target folder is local or remote. The Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature writes to SMB folders.

Local destination folder

No changes required (do note that the Pickup Log Events Service Logging Agent must have access to the folder(a), see Prerequisites for Pickup Service for additional details)

Remote SMB File share

Port Name Inbound Outbound TCP UDP Comment
53 DNS The Agent needs to know where your other servers/services are (can sometimes optionally be solved with user-defined entries in the hosts file in each Windows server instance), review the following 'Microsoft' user guide
135-139 SMB Microsoft file sharing SMB
445 SMB Direct-hosted SMB traffic

Frequently asked questions

Additional solutions to common problems and the FAQ for the Nodinite WCF Diagnostics Tracing Feature exist in the Troubleshooting user guide.

Next Step

Complete these steps to enable WCF Diagnostics Tracing with business intelligence:

  1. Install WCF Diagnostics Feature - Download and install the feature
  2. Configuration - Configure DefaultMessageType and MessageTypeFromBody properties
  3. Message Types - Define business transaction types (Critical first step)
  4. Search Field Expressions - Configure extraction of business data