Orleans Dashboard

November 13, 2025 · View on GitHub

⚠️ DEPRECATION NOTICE

This project has been merged into the main Orleans repository and is no longer actively maintained here.

Please use the official Orleans Dashboard instead:

New Repository: https://github.com/dotnet/orleans

Migration PR: https://github.com/dotnet/orleans/pull/9751

Documentation: Visit the Orleans documentation for the latest dashboard information

For new projects, please install and use the dashboard from the official Orleans packages.

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A dashboard for Microsoft Orleans which provides some simple metrics and insights into what is happening inside your Orleans appliction.

The dashboard is simple to set up and is designed as a convenience for developers to use whilst building Orleans applications. It is not designed as a replacement for a production monitoring system.

Installation

Using the Package Manager Console:

dotnet add package OrleansDashboard

Then add with programmatic configuration:

new HostBuilder()
  .UseOrleans(o => o.UseDashboard(options => { })
  .Build();

The dashboard should be installed on every silo in the cluster.

Start the silo, and open this url in your browser: http://localhost:8080

Please note, the dashboard registers its services and grains using ConfigureApplicationParts which disables the automatic discovery of grains in Orleans. To enable automatic discovery of the grains of the original project, change the configuration to:

new HostBuilder()
  .UseOrleans(o => {
    o.ConfigureApplicationParts(parts => parts.AddFromApplicationBaseDirectory());
    o.UseDashboard(options => { });
  })
  .Build();

Self-Hosted Dashboard

In some cases you may wish to disable the dashboard's own web server, and host the dashboard on your own web application.

You can configure to include the dashboard as middleware:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http.Extensions;
using Orleans;
using Orleans.Hosting;

var builder = WebApplication.CreateBuilder();

builder.Host.UseOrleans(siloBuilder =>
{
  siloBuilder.UseLocalhostClustering();
  siloBuilder.UseDashboard(x => x.HostSelf = true);
});

var app = builder.Build();

app.Map("/dashboard", x => x.UseOrleansDashboard());

CPU and Memory Metrics on Windows

The CPU and Memory metrics are only enabled on Windows when you add the Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansTelemetryConsumers.Counters package and have registered an implementation of IHostEnvironmentStatistics such as with builder.UsePerfCounterEnvironmentStatistics() (currently Windows only). You also have to wait some time before you see the data.

CPU and Memory Metrics on Linux

Since version 2.3, Orleans includes an implementation of IHostEnvironmentStatistics for Linux in Microsoft.Orleans.OrleansTelemetryConsumers.Linux. To enable CPU and Memory metrics, install the NuGet package and add the implementation to the silo using siloBuilder.UseLinuxEnvironmentStatistics().

CPU and Memory Metrics on AWS ECS

A community-maintained implementation of IHostEnvironmentStatistics for AWS ECS is available in Orleans.TelemetryConsumers.ECS. To enable CPU and Memory metrics, install the NuGet package and add the implementation to the silo using siloBuilder.UseEcsTaskHostEnvironmentStatistics().

Configuring the Dashboard

The dashboard supports the following properties for the configuration:

Username : Set a username for accessing the dashboard (basic auth).
Password : Set a password for accessing the dashboard (basic auth).
Host : Host name to bind the web server to (default is *).
Port : Set the port number for the dashboard to listen on (default is 8080).
HostSelf : Set the dashboard to host it's own http server (default is true).
CounterUpdateIntervalMs : The update interval in milliseconds between sampling counters (default is 1000).

new HostBuilder()
  .UseOrleans(o => {
    o.UseDashboard(options => {
      options.Username = "USERNAME";
      options.Password = "PASSWORD";
      options.Host = "*";
      options.Port = 8080;
      options.HostSelf = true;
      options.CounterUpdateIntervalMs = 1000;
    })
  })
  .Build();

Note that some users have noticed performance degredation when using the dashboard. In this case it is recommended that you try increasing the CounterUpdateIntervalMS to 10000 to see if that helps.

Using the Dashboard

Once your silos are running, you can connect to any of them using your web browser: http://silo-address:8080/

If you've started the dashboard on an alternative port, you'll need to specify that instead.

The dashboard will also relay trace information over http. You can view this in the dashboard, or from the terminal: curl http://silo-address:8080/Trace

Grain Details

For the state output we use some conventions:

Looks for a parameter less method "GetState". Example: TestStateInMemoryGrain.cs
Looks for methods thats returns types that are declared as IPersistentState property in the concret grain type. Example: TestStateGrain.cs

For Compound Key grains pass the id in format "{id},{additionalKey}", example: 123,testing

Building the UI

This is only required if you want to modify the user interface.

The user interface is react.js, using browserify to compose the javascript delivered to the browser. The HTML and JS files are embedded resources within the dashboard DLL.

To build the UI, you must have node.js and npm installed.

To build index.min.js, which contains the UI components and dependencies, install the dependencies and run the build script using npm:

$ cd App
$ npm install
$ npm run build

This will copy the bundled, minified javascript file into the correct place for it to be picked up as an embedded resource in the .NET OrleansDashboard project.

You will need to rebuild the OrleansDashboard project to see any changes.

Testing the Dashboard

The Tests/TestHosts/ directory contains a number of preconfigured test application.

Try the Tests/TestHosts/TestHost project as a starting point.

Dashboard API

The dashboard exposes an HTTP API you can consume yourself.

DashboardCounters

GET /DashboardCounters

Returns a summary of cluster metrics. Number of active hosts (and a history), number of activations (and a history), summary of the active grains and active hosts.

{
  "totalActiveHostCount": 3,
  "totalActiveHostCountHistory": [ ... ],
  "hosts": [ ... ],
  "simpleGrainStats": [ ... ],
  "totalActivationCount": 32,
  "totalActivationCountHistory": [ ... ]
}

Historical Stats

GET /HistoricalStats/{siloAddress}

Returns last 100 samples of a silo's stats.

[
  {
    "activationCount": 175,
    "recentlyUsedActivationCount": 173,
    "requestQueueLength": 0,
    "sendQueueLength": 0,
    "receiveQueueLength": 0,
    "cpuUsage": 88.216095,
    "availableMemory": 5097017340,
    "memoryUsage": 46837756,
    "totalPhysicalMemory": 17179869184,
    "isOverloaded": false,
    "clientCount": 1,
    "receivedMessages": 8115,
    "sentMessages": 8114,
    "dateTime": "2017-07-05T11:58:11.39491Z"
  },
  ...
]

Silo Properties

GET /SiloProperties/{address}

Returns properties captured for the given Silo. At the moment this is just the Orleans version.

{
  "OrleansVersion": "1.5.0.0"
}

Grain Stats

GET /GrainStats/{grainName}

Returns the grain method profiling counters collected over the last 100 seconds for each grain, aggregated across all silos

{
    "TestGrains.TestGrain.ExampleMethod2": {
    "2017-07-05T12:23:31": {
    "period": "2017-07-05T12:23:31.2230715Z",
    "siloAddress": null,
    "grain": "TestGrains.TestGrain",
    "method": "ExampleMethod2",
    "count": 2,
    "exceptionCount": 2,
    "elapsedTime": 52.1346,
    "grainAndMethod": "TestGrains.TestGrain.ExampleMethod2"
  },
  "2017-07-05T12:23:32": {
    "period": "2017-07-05T12:23:32.0823568Z",
    "siloAddress": null,
    "grain": "TestGrains.TestGrain",
    "method": "ExampleMethod2",
    "count": 5,
    "exceptionCount": 4,
    "elapsedTime": 127.04310000000001,
    "grainAndMethod": "TestGrains.TestGrain.ExampleMethod2"
  },
  ...
}

Cluster Stats

GET /ClusterStats

Returns the aggregated grain method profiling counters collected over the last 100 seconds for whole cluster.

You should only look at the values for period, count, exceptionCount and elapsedTime. The other fields are not used in this response.

{
  "2017-07-05T12:11:32": {
    "period": "2017-07-05T12:11:32.6507369Z",
    "siloAddress": null,
    "grain": null,
    "method": null,
    "count": 32,
    "exceptionCount": 4,
    "elapsedTime": 153.57039999999998,
    "grainAndMethod": "."
  },
  "2017-07-05T12:11:33": {
    "period": "2017-07-05T12:11:33.7203266Z",
    "siloAddress": null,
    "grain": null,
    "method": null,
    "count": 10,
    "exceptionCount": 2,
    "elapsedTime": 65.87930000000001,
    "grainAndMethod": "."
  },
  ...
}

Silo Stats

GET /SiloStats/{siloAddress}

Returns the aggregated grain method profiling counters collected over the last 100 seconds for that silo.

You should only look at the values for period, count, exceptionCount and elapsedTime. The other fields are not used in this response.

{
  "2017-07-05T12:11:32": {
    "period": "2017-07-05T12:11:32.6507369Z",
    "siloAddress": null,
    "grain": null,
    "method": null,
    "count": 32,
    "exceptionCount": 4,
    "elapsedTime": 153.57039999999998,
    "grainAndMethod": "."
  },
  "2017-07-05T12:11:33": {
    "period": "2017-07-05T12:11:33.7203266Z",
    "siloAddress": null,
    "grain": null,
    "method": null,
    "count": 10,
    "exceptionCount": 2,
    "elapsedTime": 65.87930000000001,
    "grainAndMethod": "."
  },
  ...
}

Silo Stats

GET /SiloCounters/{siloAddress}

Returns the current values for the Silo's counters.

[
  {
    "name": "App.Requests.Latency.Average.Millis",
    "value": "153.000",
    "delta": null
  },
  {
    "name": "App.Requests.TimedOut",
    "value": "0",
    "delta": "0"
  },
  ...
]

Top Grain Methods

GET /TopGrainMethods

Returns the top 5 grain methods in terms of requests/sec, error rate and latency

{
  "calls": [
    {
      "grain": "TestGrains.TestGrain",
      "method": "ExampleMethod2",
      "count": 1621,
      "exceptionCount": 783,
      "elapsedTime": 343.75,
      "numberOfSamples": 100
    },
    {
      "grain": "TestGrains.TestGrain",
      "method": "ExampleMethod1",
      "count": 1621,
      "exceptionCount": 0,
      "elapsedTime": 91026.73,
      "numberOfSamples": 100
    }
    ...
  ],
  "latency": [ ... ],
  "errors": [ ... ],
}

Reminders

GET /Reminders/{page}

Returns the total number of reminders, and a page of 25 reminders. If the page number is not supplied, it defaults to page 1.

{
  "count": 1500,
  "reminders": [
    {
      "grainReference": "GrainReference:*grn/D32F2751/0000007b",
      "name": "Frequent",
      "startAt": "2017-07-05T11:53:51.8648668Z",
      "period": "00:01:00",
      "primaryKey": "123"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

Trace

GET /Trace

Streams the trace log as plain text in a long running HTTP request.