Keynote: Introducing .NET Aspire – Cloud Native Development for .NET - Scott Hunter

.NET Aspire is a new cloud-native development stack for building distributed applications, providing orchestration, observability and deployment capabilities out of the box

Key features include:

• Built-in dashboard for local development and monitoring
• Automatic service discovery between components
• Health checks and resilience patterns enabled by default
• Open Telemetry integration for observability
• Support for containerized dependencies (Redis, PostgreSQL etc.)

Works with existing .NET applications - no rewrite required. Can be added to any ASP.NET Core, console, or desktop application

Infrastructure provisioning and deployment handled through Azure Developer CLI (azd), but not Azure-specific - works with AWS and other clouds

Uses convention over configuration approach:

• Service defaults enabled automatically
• Resource naming standardized
• Connection strings and secrets handled securely
• Environment variables injected automatically

Supports multiple development workflows:

• Visual Studio integration
• Command line with VS Code
• Works on Windows/Mac/Linux

Handles common distributed application challenges:

• Service discovery
• Resiliency/retries
• Health monitoring
• Telemetry
• Container orchestration

Integrates with popular front-end frameworks like React, Vue and Angular alongside .NET backend services

Focus on developer productivity by reducing boilerplate and providing sensible defaults while remaining configurable