View a List of Worker Processes (IIS 7)

  • Article

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

You can view performance information about worker processes running in application pools on your Web server. This information can help you reduce the number of applications that cause problems on your Web server, and help you decide how to fix issues. For example, you may find that a particular application pool frequently shows a high level of CPU usage, such as 80 percent. By using this information, you can determine which applications run in that application pool, and try to diagnose whether a problem occurs in a particular application or whether you must isolate an application additionally by moving it to another application pool.

IIS 7 lists worker processes with associated application pool names, and provides the following information for each worker process:

  • Application Pool Name. The name of the application pool. In the case of Web gardens, the same application pool may be listed more than once in the grid to account for different worker processes running in the application pool.

  • Process ID. The worker process identifier (ID) associated with the application pool.

  • State. The state of the process, such as starting, running, or stopping.

  • CPU %. The percentage of time that the worker process has used the CPU since last update. This corresponds to CPU Usage in Task Manager.

  • Private Bytes (KB). The current size of memory committed to a worker process, which cannot be shared with other processes. This corresponds to Virtual Memory Size in Windows Task Manager.

  • Virtual Bytes (KB). The current size of the virtual address space for a worker process. This does not correspond to anything in Windows Task Manager.

Prerequisites

For information about the levels at which you can perform this procedure, and the modules, handlers, and permissions that are required to perform this procedure, see Worker Processes and Currently Executing Requests Feature Requirements (IIS 7).

Exceptions to feature requirements

  • None

To view a list of worker processes

You can perform this procedure by using the user interface (UI), by running Appcmd.exe commands in a command-line window, by editing configuration files directly, or by writing WMI scripts.

User Interface

To Use the UI

  1. Open IIS Manager. For information about opening IIS Manager, see Open IIS Manager (IIS 7). For information about navigating to locations in the UI, see Navigation in IIS Manager (IIS 7).

  2. In the Connections pane, select the server node in the tree.

  3. In Features View, double-click Worker Processes.

  4. View the list of worker processes in the grid.

Command-line

To view a list of worker processes, use the following syntax:

appcmd list wps

For more information about Appcmd.exe, see Appcmd.exe (IIS 7).

Configuration

The procedure in this topic affects the following configuration elements:

  • None

For more information about IIS 7 configuration, see IIS 7.0: IIS Settings Schema on MSDN.

WMI

Use the following WMI classes, methods, or properties to perform this procedure:

  • WorkerProcess class

  • ApplicationPoolContainsProcess class

For more information about WMI and IIS, see Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) in IIS 7. For more information about the classes, methods, or properties associated with this procedure, see the IIS WMI Provider Reference on the MSDN site.