How to run Aspire on multiple computers instead of running Aspire on Azure

[cysnet]

How to run Aspire on multiple computers instead of running Aspire on Azure?

[cysnet]

Does Aspire only run in Azure?

[plppp2001]

Can I add Aspire to my Web API if my Prod web api app runs on IIS?

[DamianEdwards]

Aspire doesn't include a runtime control plane or hosting mechanism for outside of the developer scenario. It's intended the app is deployed to something like kubernetes or a container-based PaaS. Ultimately the apps are standard .NET projects that you can deploy and configure in any of the supported ways.

[HClausing]

I'm doing some tests here with the starter template, and it's working fine just with Kestrel.

EDIT: Published AppHost project seems to be the same as Debug one. ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT variable on running projects still showing "Development" on Dashboard's Enviroment variables dialog, when running from apphost.exe file.

[cysnet]

@DamianEdwards Is there a document to describe how to deploy aspire applications to k8s?

[davidfowl]

There is no automated deployment to k8s support in aspire preview1. Deploying to k8s is manual right now. We plan to investigate this in the future.

[cysnet]

@davidfowl how to deploy aspire applications to k8s manually? create deployments for every aspire application?

[cysnet]

@davidfowl Will multi-virtual machine deployment be supported in the future instead of k8s?

[davidfowl]

@davidfowl Will multi-virtual machine deployment be supported in the future instead of k8s?

No, never. We're not rebuilding Kubernetes. The orchestration here is optimized for development scenarios. If you want anything on multiple machines, then use k8s.

[cysnet]

@davidfowl When is it expected that there will be documentation on how to deploy through k8s? And before this, could I only deploy to Azure?

[davidfowl]

Support for automatically generating and deploying to k8s? Months away. Maybe 2 (this experience needs to be designed). Yes, you can deploy to azure using AZD. Aspire itself cannot deploy to azure, the azure tools understand aspire manifests.

If you want to help design the k8s experience follow and contribute to this issue #830

[HClausing]

@davidfowl Will multi-virtual machine deployment be supported in the future instead of k8s?

No, never. We're not rebuilding Kubernetes. The orchestration here is optimized for development scenarios. If you want anything on multiple machines, then use k8s.

Hi @davidfowl , I'm not going against the plans. But not only me, but many users from communities that I participate liked a lot what we've seen on .NET Conf about the .NET Aspire. I guess it so much powerfull for just to stay only on development scenarios. It's very easy to setup and run just using Kestrel + YARP (when we don't need to use K8S neither Docker).

We'll very happy we could see .NET Aspire to running also on production scenarios.

I'm sorry if I understand something wrong.

[davidfowl]

I don't think there's anything wrong with your desire to want this experience for deployments to non-cloud environments, but the reason we target the cloud and things like k8s for deployment is because there's a standard set of APIs for interacting with and configuring the compute, networking and anything required to make these systems run.

If you want to deploy to another environment then you can use aspire's extensible system but you have to build a tool that understands your target environment. I can help guide you to build it, but it's not something we are building as part of aspire.

[HClausing]

I don't think there's anything wrong with your desire to want this experience for deployments to non-cloud environments, but the reason we target the cloud and things like k8s for deployment is because there's a standard set of APIs for interacting with and configuring the compute, networking and anything required to make these systems run.

If you want to deploy to another environment then you can use aspire's extensible system but you have to build a tool that understands your target environment. I can help guide you to build it, but it's not something we are building as part of aspire.

Cool, thank you so much for the answer!

What I'll try to do is to deploy to a server using only Kestrel + Aspire + YARP. It's alread works fine, but I've noted that Publish option on VS Preview 17.9 is compiling the projects looks like the Debug configuration, and it doesn't copy the compiled files to desired target folder (just for the \bin\Release).

After it, I can immagine for the first time an extension that can allow to restart some service from the list on dashboard, but just for authenticated admins (role).

Do you believe it can be possible? For sure, not from official Aspire package, since it's not on roadmap, but into another extension.

[davidfowl]

Are you running your applications in containers or just as executables on the machine?

I find these discussions to be more useful with diagrams:

What features of aspire do you want to persist in your production environment?

• The dashboard 👍🏾
• service discovery 👍🏾
• The orchestrator (which is only usable in development)? If yes, what are you using today to run your applications in prod?
• What else?

[HClausing]

Are you running your applications in containers or just as executables on the machine?

Actually I pretend to run on the prodution environment without containers. I like the ideia of Aspire starting every depedant project or executable by itself and showing their status into a deshboard (And maybe on future ofering a restart option on dashboard or function .Restart(...); ).

What features of aspire do you want to persist in your production environment?

• The dashboard 👍🏾
• service discovery 👍🏾
• The orchestrator (which is only usable in development)? If yes, what are you using today to run your applications in prod?
• What else?

• The dashboard: It's good to check the health/logs from every dependant project/executable (services / microservices);
• Service discovery: Service discovery: I didn't kwon this feature until aspire, and I liked it alot;
• The orchestrator: Maybe I misunderstood this feature, but nowadays I'm running every executable from required services by scheduled tasks on OS (triggering they from OS startup - not requires an user to log on). This feature will simplify it into a single scheduled task instead many. It can allow on-premises deployment, for example, without docker and k8s.

Based on diagram, without Aspire, and not using Docker, I should configure four scheduled tasks on OS, and sometimes one or more can exit and the related services will also fail, and we only discover by the Task Manager (if Windows Server) or Event Viewer. The .NET Aspire on this preview state already helps a lot.

[samsp-msft]

Maybe we should be looking at how to enable the projects for Aspire be more easily run as a windows service or linux daemon for non-cloud deployment scenarios? As long as the apps can be F5'd while in VS, the eventual hosting model shouldn't matter.

[davidfowl]

Aspire provides an orchestrator for development but not for production. If you want to use the aspire model in your deployed application then you need an orchestrator. I'd recommend Kubernetes.

Based on diagram, without Aspire, and not using Docker, I should configure four scheduled tasks on OS, and sometimes one or more can exit and the related services will also fail, and we only discover by the Task Manager (if Windows Server) or Event Viewer. The .NET Aspire on this preview state already helps a lot.

If you go custom on prem, then you're pulling all of these pieces together on your own. To get the aspire experience on your windows server then you need to figure out:

• How to deploy the dashboard and where it runs
• How the dashboard gets information about the running apps and how it gets their information (this can be done but it would need to be written)
• How those services send telemetry to the dashboard so that you get telemetry.

All of this could be built by a sufficiently motivated set of people. The aspire team doesn't have interest in building this but would provide guidance on how you can make it work.

[HClausing]

After some tryings, I've figured a good option: Use of builder.AddExecutable(), and manually set the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT variable on executable's appsettings.json. I guess it's a good way to use Aspire on premise deploy.

Now I just looking for a way to remove the "unknown_service:" prefix from Dashboard naming.

[davidfowl]

After some tryings, I've figured a good option: Use of builder.AddExecutable(), and manually set the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT variable on executable's appsettings.json. I guess it's a good way to use Aspire on premise deploy.

The built in orchestrator isn't supported outside of local developer environments.

[HClausing]

Sure. No problem at all. I'm just doing some experiments.

Even thinking on local developer environments, I didn't figure how to remove the "unknown_service:" prefix from Executables references on "Structured Logs" and "Metrics" page:

[davidfowl]

When you add a project we add environment variables that configure the OTLP exporter:

aspire/src/Aspire.Hosting/Otlp/OtlpConfigurationExtensions.cs

Line 68 in 9073e07

public static IResourceBuilder<T> WithOtlpExporter<T>(this IResourceBuilder<T> builder) where T : IResourceWithEnvironment

[HClausing]

Nice, when adding .WithOtlpExporter() after .AddExecutable() solved well.

Thanks again @davidfowl ! Sorry if i'm bothering with many questions.

[HClausing]

Hi all,

About the standalone Dashboard: I've setup an test environment with success, but I've missed the "Resources" tab, because there's no URL for "DOTNET_RESOURCE_SERVICE_ENDPOINT_URL" (structures logs, metrics are all working fine with another exe's running in kestrel).

This resource service, by the way, comes from Aspire.Hosting, right? Is it already expected by design? So, using it as standalone (I've clonned the repository and debug the Dashboard) we won't be able to se any Resource.

[davidfowl]

The resource server in Aspire.Hosting is for development purposes only. You'll need to write a new resource server for your environment.

[clarkezone]

Any updates on documentation for how to deploy to local k8s? Do i still need to make my own manifests?

[davidfowl]

See https://github.com/prom3theu5/aspirational-manifests

[SeidChr]

I would relly love to see a soulution for environment where azre or k8s is just no valid solution. The companies i work with, for the most part, are relying on windows servers with IIS hosting still.
Is there any way we can benefit from aspire? Currently we use powershell scripts to deploy the software, which has to run on each machine on the cluster

[HClausing]

It's packaged as a container image and as a part of the workload (using these packages) https://www.nuget.org/packages/Aspire.Dashboard.Sdk.win-x64/8.0.1 (there are architecture specific packages). These aren't normal nuget packages that you install as part of your projects. They are standalone executables.

I'm thinking on scenario that can be usefull do deploy on IIS / Kestrel, please let me know if I'm not wrong:

1. Build a basic console/asp.net project that is responsible to run Aspire.Dashboard and many others services/projects (like Aspire does in development, but without the Resources, etc);

2. Deploy the package content (executables) and many other published services at some item 1 subfolder/relative path;

3. Create a scheduled task / daemon / service to run item 1.

[SeidChr]

I've managed to extract the runtime and actually run it on IIS. So there is a way! :)
EDIT: there is even a web.config in the folder, so to set up IIS it was only required to install the latest dotnet hosting bundle, add a single environment variable to the web-config disabling the login token and also configure the ports to be used in the appsettings and iis bindings.

{
    "AllowedHosts": "*",
    "Dashboard": {
        "Frontend": {
            "EndpointUrls": "http://localhost:27524"
        },
        "Otlp": {
            "EndpointUrl": "http://localhost:27525"
        }
    }
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false">
    <system.webServer>
      <handlers>
        <add name="aspNetCore" path="*" verb="*" modules="AspNetCoreModuleV2" resourceType="Unspecified" />
      </handlers>
      <aspNetCore processPath=".\Aspire.Dashboard.exe" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile=".\logs" hostingModel="inprocess">
        <environmentVariables>
          <environmentVariable name="DOTNET_DASHBOARD_UNSECURED_ALLOW_ANONYMOUS" value="true" />
        </environmentVariables>
      </aspNetCore>
    </system.webServer>
  </location>
</configuration>

[SeidChr]

@davidfowl
I just managed to send telemetry to the standalone dashboard. Data is displayed in structured logs, metrics and traces 🎉.

The standard landing page of the dashboard would showing the services running in a typical aspire environment.
Running the dashboard standalone seems to disable this page along with the console output.
Yet showing the status and health of the services that are sending data is one of the more valueable functionalities I am looking for. (Console doesn't matter. The structured logs are already great!)

Before I dig into the dashboard code, can you point me to a documentation about what requirement needs to be fulfilled to display at least the service overview, so i can see running services?

In the end i need a nice way to display connection status information between the services. I am not sure if this would be a metric or displayable on that main page.

[davidfowl]

I just managed to send telemetry to the standalone dashboard. Data is displayed in structured logs, metrics and traces 🎉.

Excellent!

The standard landing page of the dashboard would showing the services running in a typical aspire environment.
Running the dashboard standalone seems to disable this page along with the console output.

I answered this in detail #1439 (reply in thread)

[SeidChr]

So basically i need to create "a resource server" which takes some config file describing the different services and then fetches the data from the services and makes it queryable for the dashboard.
Essentially a monitoring application.

[lpduyplus]

I found code can create resoure outside bebug as below. But i want to confuge run app in enviroment production, can yout help me!
step1: in web app project name "client" (in my sample) right click and select Add> >.NET Aspire Orchestrator support, it will be have three new project
+client.ServiceDefaults : it easy to copy to client project as extentions (it is content some method to generate endpoint and resource) then can remove it.
+client -> program.cs automatic add some code :
using client; using client.Controllers; using client.Models; using client.Hubs; var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args); builder.AddServiceDefaults(); < -- here ... var app = builder.Build(); app.MapDefaultEndpoints(); <-- and here ... try { app.Run(); } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine($"{ex.Message}\n{ex.StackTrace}"); }
+client.AppHost

**IProjects.cs**
`using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Builder;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
namespace Projects;

[global::System.CodeDom.Compiler.GeneratedCode("Aspire.Hosting", null)]
[global::System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.ExcludeFromCodeCoverage(Justification = "Generated code.")]
[global::System.Diagnostics.DebuggerDisplay("Type = {GetType().Name,nq}, ProjectPath = {ProjectPath}")]
public class Client : global::Aspire.Hosting.IProjectMetadata
{

public string ProjectPath => """ full path to \client.csproj""";

}
`
and fix some code on programe.cs to run localhost http after build release AppHost (run direction on window enviroment
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("ASPNETCORE_URLS")))
{
Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("ASPNETCORE_URLS", "http://localhost:5001");
}
var otlpEndpoint = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("DOTNET_DASHBOARD_OTLP_ENDPOINT_URL");
var otlpHttpEndpoint = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("DOTNET_DASHBOARD_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_URL");
Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("ASPIRE_ALLOW_UNSECURED_TRANSPORT", "true");
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(otlpEndpoint) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(otlpHttpEndpoint))
{
DOTNET_DASHBOARD_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_URL.
Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("DOTNET_DASHBOARD_OTLP_HTTP_ENDPOINT_URL", null);
}
else if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(otlpEndpoint) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(otlpHttpEndpoint))
{
Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("DOTNET_DASHBOARD_OTLP_ENDPOINT_URL", "http://localhost:4317");
}
var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args);

builder.AddProject<Projects.Client>("client");

builder.Build().Run();