Configuring IIS to Handle Heavy Usage

ID: Q229814

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Internet Information Server version 4.0

SYMPTOMS

A computer running Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) 4.0 may stop responding to client requests, even though the server appears to be stable and healthy. This situation usually arises from a heavy load; however, IIS does not consume large amounts of CPU or memory resources. This behavior may occur on a per-network interface card, IP address, or TCP port basis. A Network Monitor trace will indicate that the server is immediately resetting TCP connections, indicating that the physical, network, and transport layers are functioning at full capacity.

CAUSE

The problem occurs because of a lack of resources at the application layer to handle the requests.

RESOLUTION

Set the following metabase parameters:

ServerListenBacklog

MaxEndPointConnections

Increasing these values will result in an increase in handle count and memory usage. The values need to be tuned to achieve a balance between load handling capacity and memory usage.

MORE INFORMATION

The ServerListenBacklog property specifies the number of outstanding sockets that can be queued. This value is based on the operating system parameter and the server size specified in the ServerSize property.

ServerListenBacklog
Range: 0 - unlimited
Default: 40

Use Adsutil.vbs to change the value.

The Windows Script Host must be installed on the server to run this Visual Basic script:

cscript c:\winnt\system32\inetsrv\adminsamples\adsutil.vbs
SET w3svc/1/ServerListenBacklog 500

The MaxEndpointConnections property specifies the maximum number of listen sockets that will be aggregated on a network endpoint. For example, if this value is set to 15, a maximum of 15 total connections can be made to a single port, even if more than one domain is bound to the port.

MaxEndPointConnections
Range: 0 - unlimited
Default: 1

Use Adsutil.vbs to change the value.

REFERENCES

Online Product Documentation

Additional query words: Overload time_wait IIS TCP RESETS

Keywords :
Version : winnt:4.0
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbprb