Monitor Activity on a Web Server (IIS 7)

Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista

IIS 7 includes two major advances in diagnosing and troubleshooting sites and applications. The first new feature is real-time state information about application pools, worker processes, sites, application domains, and running requests. The second new advantage are the detailed trace events that track a request throughout the complete request-and-response process. To enable the collection of these trace events, IIS 7 can be configured to automatically capture full trace logs, in XML format, for any particular request based on elapsed time or error response codes. Health and Diagnostics includes the following features:

  • Failed Request Tracing Rules

  • Logging

  • Worker Processes

Failed Request Tracing Rules

Failed request tracing rules let you capture an XML-formatted log of a problem when it occurs, so that you do not necessarily have to reproduce the problem before you start troubleshooting.

For more information about how to configure failed request tracing rules, see Configuring Tracing for Failed Requests in IIS 7.

Logging

In addition to the Windows Server® 2008 system and security logs, you should configure IIS to log site visits. When users access your server that is running IIS 7, IIS logs the information. The logs provide valuable information that you can use to identify any unauthorized attempts to compromise your Web server.

For more information about how to configure logging, see Configuring Logging in IIS 7.

Worker Processes

The worker processes feature lets you monitor sites, application pools, server worker processes, application domains, and requests.

For more information about worker processes, see Monitoring Worker Processes and Currently Executing Requests in IIS 7.