Here’s the complete list of tools, SDKs, and utilities you’ll want to install (and verify licenses/free editions) before you start.
🧰 1. Core Development Environment
| Tool | Purpose | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| Visual Studio 2022 (Community/Professional/Enterprise) | Primary IDE for profiling, diagnostics, and building ASP.NET Core apps | https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/ |
| .NET 8 SDK (or latest LTS) | To build and run .NET 6–8 apps | https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download |
| Visual Studio Code (optional) | Lightweight editor for benchmarking and scripting | https://code.visualstudio.com/ |
| SQL Server Developer Edition / Azure SQL Edge / PostgreSQL | Backend database for EF Core & query optimization labs | https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-downloads |
🧩 2. Profiling & Diagnostics Tools (Day 1–2)
| Tool | Use Case | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| Visual Studio Diagnostic Tools | CPU, memory, thread, and GC profiling | Built into Visual Studio |
| JetBrains dotTrace | Performance tracing & async flow analysis | https://www.jetbrains.com/dottrace/ |
| JetBrains dotMemory | Memory leak analysis & heap snapshots | https://www.jetbrains.com/dotmemory/ |
| PerfView | ETW events, GC & JIT analysis (used by Microsoft teams) | https://github.com/microsoft/perfview |
⚙️ 3. Benchmarking & Micro-Performance (Day 3)
| Tool | Use Case | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| BenchmarkDotNet (NuGet) | Micro-benchmarking framework for .NET | dotnet add package BenchmarkDotNet |
| LINQPad 7+ (optional) | Quick interactive .NET testing | https://www.linqpad.net/ |
🔥 4. Load, Stress & Resiliency Testing (Day 4)
| Tool | Use Case | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| k6 (Grafana Labs) | Modern load testing via JavaScript scripting | https://k6.io/docs/getting-started/installation/ |
| Apache JMeter | Traditional Java-based load testing tool | https://jmeter.apache.org/download_jmeter.cgi |
| GitHub CLI / Azure DevOps CLI | For CI/CD pipeline integration | https://cli.github.com/ & https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli |
🚀 5. Application & Middleware Optimization (Day 5)
| Tool | Purpose | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| Postman | API testing and response-time measurement | https://www.postman.com/downloads/ |
| Docker Desktop | For containerized ASP.NET Core API & microservice testing | https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/ |
| RabbitMQ / Kafka (optional) | Messaging performance testing | https://www.rabbitmq.com/download.html & https://kafka.apache.org/downloads |
🗄️ 6. Database Performance Engineering (Day 6)
| Tool | Purpose | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) | Query Store, Index tuning, Query plans | https://aka.ms/ssmsfullsetup |
| Azure Data Studio | Cross-platform SQL profiler | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/azure-data-studio/ |
| Entity Framework Core Power Tools (VS Extension) | EF visualizer for models & queries | Available in Visual Studio Marketplace |
📈 7. Monitoring, Observability & Resilience (Day 7)
| Tool | Purpose | Download Link |
|---|---|---|
| Azure Application Insights (in Azure Portal) | Telemetry & APM for .NET apps | https://portal.azure.com/ |
| Dynatrace OneAgent (trial) | AI-based monitoring | https://www.dynatrace.com/trial/ |
| OpenTelemetry Collector + Jaeger | Distributed tracing setup | https://opentelemetry.io/ & https://www.jaegertracing.io/ |
| Polly NuGet Package | Fault-handling and resilience library | dotnet add package Polly |
| Azure Chaos Studio | Chaos testing (cloud-based) | https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/chaos-studio/ |
💡 Optional (Nice-to-Have)
- PowerToys + Windows Terminal (for modern dev environment)
- Fiddler Classic or HTTP Toolkit (to inspect HTTP traffic)
- Grafana + Prometheus (to visualize k6 or OpenTelemetry metrics)
- Git & GitHub Desktop (for repo versioning)
- Notion / Obsidian (for taking structured notes)
- Putty
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