How to disable standard performance counters in Application Insights?

Question

Standard performance counters in Application Insights generate too much volume. How can I disable them and only report my own counters + some standard ones (but not all), or just reduce sample frequency?

Answer 1

Adding this answer for asp.netcore users. modify your startup.cs as shown. You have two options. First completely disables the perf counters.

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{

    var serviceDescriptor = services.FirstOrDefault(descriptor => descriptor.ImplementationType == typeof(PerformanceCollectorModule));
    services.Remove(serviceDescriptor);
}

or second removes individual counters and you can add your own if you want later.

public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, IHostingEnvironment env, ILoggerFactory loggerFactory)
{

    var modules = app.ApplicationServices.GetServices<ITelemetryModule>();
    var perfModule = modules.OfType<PerformanceCollectorModule>().First();
    perfModule.DefaultCounters.Clear();

}

Answer 2

In my case adding counters to Counters didn't affected the default counters so both sets mine and default was reported. Fortunately the collector is open source and there is a clear clue what you need to do in order remove them. Just define an empty DefaultCounters like this:

<Add Type="Microsoft.ApplicationInsights.Extensibility.PerfCounterCollector.PerformanceCollectorModule, Microsoft.AI.PerfCounterCollector">
    <DefaultCounters/>
    <Counters>
        <Add PerformanceCounter="YOUR COUNTER"/>
    </Counters>
</Add>