How to estimate needs for ASP.NET web server

asp.netsizing

My organization currently uses a third party for .NET hosting. They have a web farm set up with load balancing and real-time failover across two web servers. The third party also does the administration and monitoring of IIS and the server for us.

In general this model works but we have had some service issues with the third party, and I'm trying to convince my bosses (but also myself) that we could get our own server in house and do the configuration and monitoring of IIS ourselves and save money and have better service.

So, the first step of this is for me to figure out what size server we would need to purchase. How much RAM should it have? Processor power? # of processors? Etc. Also, do we really need two servers load balanced, or would we be just fine with one server?

How should I go about answering these questions? How do you size an ASP.NET web server? Assume I can get the necessary data such as requests / second, average size of response, etc. Are there guidelines from MS on this?

Best Answer

that we could get our own server in house and do the configuration and monitoring of IIS ourselves and save money and have better service

Choose two. Save money and better service - dont move inhouse.

So, the first step of this is for me to figure out what size server we would need to purchase. How much RAM should it have? Processor power? # of processors? Etc. Also, do we really need two servers load balanced, or would we be just fine with one server?

See, bad service. Two servers are NOT for load balancing - they are so that you can put patches into one and reboot it without interrupting the website.

How should I go about answering these questions? How do you size an ASP.NET web server? Assume I can get the necessary data such as requests / second, average size of response, etc. Are there guidelines from MS on this?

No, and can not be - it really depends what you do. Not every request / website is generated equal. Put sme numbers here, give us the URL and we may be able to get you an idea.

Related Solutions

IIS ASP.NET – How to Remove IIS/ASP.NET Response Headers

Your security department wants you to do this to make the server type harder to identify. This may lessen the barrage of automated hacking tools and make it more difficult for people to break into the server.

Within IIS, open the web site properties, then go to the HTTP Headers tab. Most of the X- headers can be found and removed here. This can be done for individual sites, or for the entire server (modify the properties for the Web Sites object in the tree).

For the Server header, on IIS6 you can use Microsoft's URLScan tool to remote that. Port 80 Software also makes a product called ServerMask that will take care of that, and a lot more, for you.

For IIS7 (and higher), you can use the URL Rewrite Module to rewrite the server header or blank it's value. In web.config (at a site or the server as a whole), add this content after the URL Rewrite Module has been installed:

<rewrite>    
  <outboundRules rewriteBeforeCache="true">
    <rule name="Remove Server header">
      <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_Server" pattern=".+" />
      <action type="Rewrite" value="" />
    </rule>
  </outboundRules>
</rewrite>

You can put a custom value into the rewrite action if you'd like. This sample sourced from this article which also has other great information.

For the MVC header, in Global.asax:

MvcHandler.DisableMvcResponseHeader = true;

Edited 11-12-2019 to update the IIS7 info since the TechNet blog link was no longer valid.

Iis – 2003 Server Enterprise Edition cannot run ASP.NET applications

There are various things to check when asp.net starts acting all funky. Checking to make sure the extensions are allowed is one, though you usually end up getting 404 not found errors rather than other sorts of failures (this is an intentionally bogus error designed to avoid leaking information to potential hackers).

However, most sorts of troubleshooting eventualy come down to reinstalling the .NET Framework and then running aspnet_regiis.exe to reset everything. There shouldn't be any differences between IIS on 2k3EE vs 2k3SE.

Also, remember that IIS isn't PAE-aware so even if you do have tons of RAM on your box, you might still have problems taking advantage of it in any given app pool.

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