HOW TO: Determine If You Have to Use Process Throttling Over Individual Internet and Intranet Programs

If you run multiple Web sites on one computer or if you have other programs that are running on the same computer as your Web server, you can use process throttling to limit the processor time that a Web site's out-of-process programs can use. If you use process throttling, you can make sure that processor time is available to other Web sites or non-Web programs. This article describes how to determine if you must use process throttling over individual Internet and intranet programs.

Determine If You Have to Use Process Throttling Over Individual Internet and Intranet Programs

If you use process throttling, you may experience slower responses to requests from the Inetinfo process and you may affect a server's responsiveness. After you modify the server configuration, always monitor the server closely to see how the change affects the server performance.

Before you configure process throttling, Microsoft recommends that you use the methods that are described in the following sections to decide whether you have to use process throttling.

Using System Monitor

Use System Monitor to examine both the %-Processor Time counter in the Processor object and the specific instance counters for the Maximum CGI Requests counter and the Total CGI Requests counter in the Web Service object. To get a realistic record of the conditions that your server experiences, collect data in log files for several days if possible.

To open System Monitor:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Administrative Tools, and then double-click Performance.
3. For more information about using System Monitor, click System Monitor in the console tree, and then click Help on the System Monitor toolbar.

For additional information about using log files with System Monitor, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Configure Process Accounting

If you configure process accounting, the Job object counter reports are included in the Internet Information Service (IIS) logs. You can use process accounting in IIS 5.0 to track the CPU time that each active server pages (ASP) program and each Common Gateway Interface (CGI) program is using. You can use the log files to determine the time period (to the millisecond) during a 24-hour period that a specific program is running.

This data is extremely useful when you try to determine exactly which programs are running most frequently on an IIS server or if a program is taking too much processor time.

To configure process accounting:

1. Open the Internet Services Manager Microsoft Management Console (MMC).
2. Right-click the Web site, and then click Properties.
3. Click the Web Site tab, and then click Properties.
4. Click the Extended Properties tab, and then click to select the Process accounting check box.
5. Click OK two times.

For additional information about how to configure process accounting to establish benchmark performance information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Examine the Dllhost Object Counters

You can examine the Dllhost object counters to determine the number of out-of-process Web Application Manager (WAM) and Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) requests.

• Process:Thread Count:dllhost: This counter counts the number of threads that are created by the pooled out-of-process programs and displays the most recent value.
• Process:Thread Count:dllhost#1, #2,..., #N: This counter counts the number of threads that are created by the isolated out-of-process request and displays the most recent value.

For more information about process throttling, see the IIS documentation for Windows 2000. To open the IIS documentation for Windows 2000, go to the following location on your server: