Case Study: Scaling an ASP.NET Web Application on IIS 6.0

  • Article

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

The following case study illustrates how to monitor and tune IIS 6.0 for improved performance and scalability. In this study, network administrators in a fictional company, Contoso, were getting ready to roll out a new Web application for the purpose of selling books online. The application code had been extensively tested, but performance and scalability statistics were still unknown. To gather performance and scalability metrics, the administrators used the Microsoft Web Capacity Analysis Tool (WCAT) to stress-test the site.

Stress testing helps administrators locate performance and scalability bottlenecks in their Web application installation. By using a tool such as WCAT or the Microsoft Application Center Test (ACT) in a test environment to simulate the server load they can expect in a production environment, administrators can isolate and fix potential bottlenecks that might undermine the customer experience. Administrators can also plan the installation capacity.

The administrators in this study were preparing to roll out the Duwamish 7.0 ASP.NET application, a fictitious online bookseller application. Their rollout consisted of the following phases:

  • Capacity planning

  • Tuning production servers

  • Scaling up

  • Scaling out

Note

This case study does not provide information about how to create a WCAT script or how to perform stress testing by using WCAT. See the WCAT documentation (Wcatguide.doc) for information about how to create a WCAT script and how to use WCAT for stress testing.

For more information about WCAT, see the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit Tools.