Monitoring and Tuning Your Server

Preventing Processor Bottlenecks

Servers running IIS 5.0 rely on the speed and efficiency of their processors. The IIS 5.0 code is multithreaded for efficient scaling on single-processor and multiprocessor computers, and is largely self-tuning. Nonetheless, processor bottlenecks are a potential problem on very active servers.

A processor bottleneck occurs when one or more processes take up nearly all the time of all processors on the computer. In a bottleneck, process threads ready to be executed must wait in a queue for processor time. All other activity comes to a halt until the queue is cleared. Processor bottlenecks can occur on multiprocessor computers even when only a single processor is fully loaded, if the work in the queue cannot be or is not distributed to the other processors. Because the problem is not centered in the other components (such as memory, disks, or network connections), upgrading or adding to those components does not overcome this performance problem, and can make it even worse.

See the following:

• Monitoring Server Processors
• Using PerfMon to Monitor Processor Activity
• Analyzing Processor Activity Data
• Process Throttling
• Monitoring Connections
• Analyzing Connection Data
• Monitoring Threads
• Suggestions for Improving Processor Usage and Performance

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