AspSessionMax Metabase Property

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

The AspSessionMax property specifies the maximum number of concurrent sessions that IIS will permit. If a client attempts to establish a new session with IIS once this limit is reached, the client will receive an HTTP 500 - Server Too Busy error.

Note

ASP requires a certain amount of memory overhead for each session maintained. Although you could use AspSessionMax to limit this memory overhead, it is generally more appropriate to manage the lifetime of session objects within IIS by using the AspSessionTimeout Metabase Property property, so that client browsers will be rejected once the limit is reached.

If an incoming request does not have an ASP session cookie, or has a session cookie that does not match an existing session, the incoming request is considered a new session request. Setting this property at the IIsWebService level applies to all in-process and pooled out-of-process application keys, at all levels. Metabase settings at the IIsWebService level or lower are ignored for in-process and pooled out-of-process applications. However, settings at the IIsWebService level or lower are used if that key is an isolated out-of-process application.

The metabase represents unlimited as the DWORD value of 4294967295 (0xFFFFFFFF); however, VBScript represents unlimited in hexadecimal format as &HFFFFFFFF. Previous versions of IIS represented unlimited as -1.

Attribute Name Attribute Value

XML Data Type

DWORD

WMI Data Type

SINT32

ADSI Data Type

DWORD

ABO Data Type

DWORD

ABO Metabase Identifier

MD_ASP_SESSIONMAX

Attributes

INHERIT

Default Value

4294967295

MetaFlagsEx

CACHE_PROPERTY_MODIFIED

User Type

ASP_MD_UT_APP

ID

7029

Configurable Locations

You can configure this property at the following locations in the IIS metabase.

Metabase Path IIS Admin Object Type

/LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT /LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT/virtual_directory_name

IIsWebVirtualDir

/LM/W3SVC/n

IIsWebServer

/LM/W3SVC

IIsWebService

/LM/W3SVC/n/ROOT/physical_directory_name /LM/W3SVC/n/virtual_directory_name/physical_directory_name

IIsWebDirectory

Code Example

For general code examples, see Code Examples to Configure Metabase Properties.

AspSessionTimeout Metabase Property