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The Art of Simplicity

When running dozens of .NET services across multiple teams, tracking which runtime versions are deployed in production is surprisingly difficult. By adding three lines of OpenTelemetry configuration to each service's startup code, you can attach the CLR version as a resource attribute using `Environment.Version.ToString()`. This metadata flows automatically into Azure Monitor (Application Insights) with every trace, metric, and log, enabling KQL queries in Log Analytics to get a live, centralised view of .NET versions across the entire fleet. The broader takeaway is that OpenTelemetry resource attributes serve as a low-friction platform visibility layer — useful for runtime versions, team ownership, deployment regions, and more.

Shining a light on .NET versions across our organisation with OpenTelemetry