This page describes monitoring for CLR crash events. The .NET Machine Agent monitors Windows for non-graceful CLR shutdowns on IIS, Windows services, and standalone applications. The agent raises CLR crash events in the Controller when such crashes occur. Use a policy to alert responsible parties when the agent reports a CLR crash.

Monitor for CLR Crash Events

Create a policy that sends notifications when a CLR crash event occurs.

  1. Verify your Email / SMS Configuration. See Enable an Email Server.
  2. Create a notification action configured to alert the parties who respond to CLR crashes. See Notification Actions.
  3. Create a policy to trigger on CLR Crash under Other Events on the Create Policy panel. For the action, choose the notification action you created in step 2. See Configure Policies.

After you create the policy, the Controller sends a notification when the .NET Machine Agent raises CLR crash events.

Analyze and Respond to CLR Crashes

When a CLR crashes, the .NET Machine Agent raises an event in the Controller. The events page on the application dashboard displays the number of server crash events, including CLR crashes, during the selected time range.

  1. Click the Server Crashes link in the application dashboard to display a list of all server crash events during the selected time range.

  2. Optionally filter on the CLR Crash event type.
    Entries for individual CLR crashes display information about the crash event, including the process ID and the Windows event log ID.

    After a CLR crash, IIS automatically tries to restart the CLR, so one issue frequently causes multiple CLR crash events.

  3. Double-click a CLR Crash type event to display more information in the CLR Crash panel:

    • The Summary tab shows the Windows process ID of the w3wp process that crashed and the Windows event log ID for the crash. The summary also includes the affected tier and node names.

      If multiple tiers have nodes on the same machine, you may see more than one tier in the CLR Crash window.

    • The Details tab displays essential information about the crash.
    • The Actions Executed tab shows any actions the event triggers. See Monitor for CLR crash events.
    • Read and add new comments on the Comments tab. For example, you can add a comment to the CLR crash event to notify colleagues that of the issue. 

Disable CLR Crash Event Reporting

The .NET Machine Agent enables CLR crash event reporting by default. To disable it:

  1. Edit the agent config.xml as an administrator. See Where to Configure App Agent Properties.
  2. Set enabled="false" for the CLR Crash Reporting element. See CLR Crash Reporting Element.
  3. Restart the AppDynamics.Agent.Coordinator service.

Crash Events Monitored by the .NET Machine Agent

The .NET Machine Agent listens on these Windows event logs for crash events:

  • Application Log
  • System Log

The agent listens for events logged at event-level Warning and higher on these sources:

  • Application Error
  • .NET Runtime
  • WAS (Windows Process Activation Service)

The agent listens for events logged at event-level Information and higher on this source:

  • Windows Error Reporting

The agent reports CLR crashes as events to the Controller:

  • All w3wp process crashes
  • Instrumented Windows service crashes
  • Instrumented standalone application crashes

The Controller treats all events as Warning severity, which is not directly related to the Windows event level.