Heap Dump

You can use the Steeltoe Heap Dump endpoint to capture and download a memory dump of your application. Depending on the type of dump and the operating system it was captured on, it can be analyzed in various tools, such as Visual Studio and PerfView.

Note

The logic used by this endpoint is similar to the dotnet-dump and dotnet-gcdump tools.

Configure Settings

The following table describes the configuration settings that you can apply to the endpoint. Each key must be prefixed with Management:Endpoints:HeapDump:.

Key	Description	Default
Enabled	Whether the endpoint is enabled	true
ID	The unique ID of the endpoint	heapdump
Path	The relative path at which the endpoint is exposed	same as ID
RequiredPermissions	Permissions required to access the endpoint, when running on Cloud Foundry	Restricted
AllowedVerbs	An array of HTTP verbs at which the endpoint is exposed	GET
HeapDumpType	Sets the type of memory dump to capture	Full, GCDump on macOS

The following table lists the memory dump types. All types are supported on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

HeapDumpType	Description
Full	The largest dump containing all memory including the module images.
Heap	A large and relatively comprehensive dump containing module lists, thread lists, all stacks, exception information, handle information, and all memory except for mapped images.
Mini	A small dump containing module lists, thread lists, exception information, and all stacks.
Triage	A small dump containing module lists, thread lists, exception information, all stacks and PII removed.
GCDump	A Garbage Collector dump, created by triggering a GC, turning on special events, and regenerating the graph of object roots from the event stream.

Enable HTTP Access

The URL path to the endpoint is computed by combining the global Management:Endpoints:Path setting with the Path setting described in the preceding section. The default path is /actuator/heapdump.

See the Exposing Endpoints and HTTP Access sections for the steps required to enable HTTP access to endpoints in an ASP.NET Core application.

To add the actuator to the service container and map its route, use the AddHeapDumpActuator extension method.

Add the following code to Program.cs to use the actuator endpoint:

using Steeltoe.Management.Endpoint.Actuators.HeapDump;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder(args);
builder.Services.AddHeapDumpActuator();

Tip

It is recommended that you use AddAllActuators() instead of adding individual actuators; this enables individually turning them on/off at runtime via configuration.