10 Lessons I Learned from Using Aspire in Production

I have been using .NET Aspire for a while now and have learned a lot along the way. In this blog post, I will share some of the lessons I have learned from using .NET Aspire in production.

https://nikiforovall.github.io/dotnet/aspire/2024/09/30/aspire-lessons-learned.html

Transcript

1. Using .NET Aspire in Production Oleksii Nikiforov EPAM /@nikiiforovall
2. Agenda 1. Who’s Who: An Into 2. Introduction to Aspire 3. Lessons Learned 4. Q&A
4. Build anything with a unified platform .NET Cloud Web Desktop Mobile Gaming IoT AI Tools Visual Studio Code CLI Visual Studio Operating system Linux Windows macOS + Ecosystem Integrations, tools, library vendors NuGet GitHub +
5. Catalog API Ordering API PostgreSQL Order Service Order Processor Client Apps Event Bus OpenAI Cloud Services Payment Service Payment Processor PostgreSQL Identity Service Identity API PostgreSQL Catalog Service Redis Basket Service Basket API PostgreSQL Webhooks Service Webhooks API Webhook Client Admin Services Observability Mobile API Web App Blazor App Mobile App Browser Mobile BFF Ordering API
6. Observability Resiliency Scalability Manageability Every App Needs
7. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications aka.ms/letslearn/dotnet/aspire
8. Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Deployment Integrations
9. Smart Defaults A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
10. .NET Aspire Service Defaults Observability Resiliency Health Checks
11. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
12. Developer Dashboard Metrics Structured Logs Dependencies Distributed Traces
13. Integrating the Developer Dashboard Standalone docker run --rm -it -p 18888:18888 -p 4317:18889 -d --name aspire-dashboard mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspire-dashboard:8.0.0 docker run --rm -it ` -p 18888:18888 ` -p 4317:18889 -d ` --name aspire-dashboard ` mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspire-dashboard:8.0.0 .NET Aspire App Host
14. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
15. Orchestration var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args); builder.AddProject<Projects.ApiService>("apiservice"); builder.AddProject<Projects.Web>("webfrontend"); builder.Build().Run();
16. After with .NET Aspire
17. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
18. Service Discovery var builder = DistributedApplication.CreateBuilder(args); var apiService = builder.AddProject<Projects.ApiService>("apiservice"); builder.AddProject<Projects.Web>("webfrontend") .WithReference(apiService); builder.Build().Run(); builder.Services.AddHttpClient<WeatherApiClient>(client => { client.BaseAddress = new("https+http://apiservice"); });
19. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
20. Integrations
21. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
22. Flexible Integrations & Deployment How You Do It Today! AWS CDK Azure Dev CLI Visual Studio
23. A cloud ready stack for building observable, production ready, distributed applications Smart Defaults Developer Dashboard Orchestration Service Discovery Integrations Deployment
24. Lessons Learned https://epa.ms/aspire-lessons- learned
25. Case Study
26. Lesson 1️⃣ Adding Aspire is quite straightforward and incremental
27. Highlights 1. A full migration of all components at once wasn’t necessary. 2. We opted not to use of ServiceDefaults. 3. To minimize changes, we used a technique I call the 'hosting integration adapter method’. 4. We were able to implement complex migration scenarios that weren't feasible before.
29. Lesson 2️⃣ Be ready to write custom integrations
31. Lesson 3️⃣ Aspire workload should be installed every time you run the CI/CD pipeline
32. Solution Before After We created a separate solution for Aspire AppHost and its dependencies .NET Aspire 9 RC1 makes it simpler You no longer need a .NET workload. Instead, add the Aspire.AppHost.Sdk
33. Lesson 4️⃣ Managing Startup Dependencies is a must have
34. Solution Before After I have created a NuGet package Nall.Aspire.Hosting.DependsOn to address this issue .NET Aspire 9 RC1 You can now specify that a resource should wait for another resource before starting
36. Lesson 5️⃣ Aspire project can take some time to boot up
37. Solution Before After We implemented a mechanism to run infrastructure and services separately .NET Aspire 9 RC1 The app host now supports persistent containers . This is useful when you want to keep the container running even after the app host has stopped. .NET Aspire 9 RC1 adds a Resource Commands including the “restart” action. If the debugger is attached, it's reattached on restart.
38. Lesson 6️⃣ It can be challenging to run things without Aspire
39. Solution Before After We implemented a mechanism to write environment variables provided by Aspire to a .env file
41. Lesson 7️⃣ There is no easy way to run a partial setup
42. Solution Before After We implemented a mechanism to run a partial setup
43. Lesson 8️⃣ Using Podman instead of Docker can be troublesome
44. Lesson 9️⃣ Aspire client integrations require IHostApplicationBuilder
46. Lesson Learn by example
47. Examples • eShopSupport - A reference .NET application using AI for a customer support ticketing system • eShop - A reference .NET application implementing an eCommerce site • eShopOnAzure - A variant of eShop that uses Azure services • cecilphillip/shadowShop - A modified version of the Aspire Shop sample application that adds integration with Stripe for payment processing, temporal for durable workflows, other customer Aspire Integrations • thangchung/practical-dotnet-aspire - The practical .NET Aspire builds on the coffeeshop app business domain
48. 6920 8140
49. Thank You! Oleksii Nikiforov EPAM /@nikiiforovall