Windows – Why add additional application pools in IIS

application-poolsiiswindows

I have multiple web sites hosted with IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003. Some of them use the .Net 1.1 framework while the others use .Net 2.0. I currently have application pools set up for each framework. Are there any other reasons to add additional application pools?

Best Answer

Yes, many:

  • AppPools can run as different identities, so you can restrict permissions this way.
  • You can assign a different identity to each app pool so that when you run task manager, you know which w3wp.exe is which.
  • You can recycle/restart one app pool without affecting the sites that are running in different app pools.
  • If you have a website that has a memory leak or generally misbehaves, you can place it in an app pool so it doesn't affect the other web sites
  • If you have a website that is very CPU-intensive (like resizing photos, for instance), you can place it in its own app pool and throttle its CPU utilization
  • If you have multiple websites that each have their own SQL database, you can use active directory authentication instead of storing usernames/passwords in web.config.
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