https://blog.duendesoftware.com/posts/20250513-duende-identityserver-and-otel-metrics-traces-and-logs-in-the-net-aspire-dashboard/

[giscus[bot]]

https://blog.duendesoftware.com/posts/20250513-duende-identityserver-and-otel-metrics-traces-and-logs-in-the-net-aspire-dashboard/

We help companies using .NET to build identity and access control solutions for modern applications.

https://blog.duendesoftware.com/posts/20250513-duende-identityserver-and-otel-metrics-traces-and-logs-in-the-net-aspire-dashboard/

[ldellisola]

I like the push for metrics and tracing, but I feel like for this to be truly useful we should also get some sort of Grafana dashboard to view to visualize all of these metrics.

I can create my own dashboard based on my interpretation of the metrics, but I’m not sure I can match it to one made by the person designing the metrics.

[RolandGuijt]

The blog post was just meant as an example on how to consume open telemetry metrics and traces from IdentityServer. There are so many solutions to consume this data that it is unfortunately not possible to provide examples/templates for all of them. If more people have this need however we can consider a follow-up blog post. If you're reading this and are interested, please upvote this discussion.

[ldellisola]

Sounds good! Thanks for the reply

[promim]

I'd also love to see a follow-up blogpost on setting up a Grafana dashboard with different examples to consume the data.

[normandev92]

Thanks for the article.

One thing I’m still unsure about is where exactly the Duende IdentityServer OTEL registrations belong.
In the sample, ServiceDefaults registers both

tracing.AddSource("Duende.IdentityServer");
metrics.AddMeter(
    "Duende.IdentityServer",
    "Duende.IdentityServer.Experimental",
    "IdentityServer");

This means every service in the Aspire solution subscribes to those traces / metrics—even workers, BFF, DCR configuration API, and resource APIs that only consume tokens but never host IdentityServer.

Is that the recommended pattern?
Or would it be cleaner to:

• keep AddSource("Duende.IdentityServer") in ServiceDefaults (harmless everywhere), but
• move the AddMeter(...) call into the single project that actually hosts IdentityServer and issues tokens, since only that process emits those counters?

I’d love to hear your guidance on where you draw the line between “centralize in ServiceDefaults” and “register only in the IdentityServer host.”
Thanks!

[maartenba]

Hi @normandev92 ! You are correct here. ServiceDefaults is a good spot as it is indeed harmless in other apps, but if you'd like to keep things clean you may indeed want to move these meters/traces into only the IdentityServer project.