In this presentation, we’re going to discuss monitoring ASP.NET. We’ll cover a number of things including: the main implications of monitoring ASP.NET, the most important performance counters to look for, performance counter values that should be measured and services dependent on ASP.NET that should be monitored.

1. Monitoring ASP.NET
How to
Monitor ASP.NET

2. What Will I Learn Here?
ASP.NET - A web development platform available in Windows Server
What is
ASP.NET?
Counters to
Monitor
Performance
Counter Values

3. ASP.net is a web development
platform available in Windows
Server. It was built by Microsoft to
allow web developers to create web
applications that are mainly hosted
using IIS. Using ASP.NET developers
can create dynamic websites that
take advantage of its libraries.
So, what exactly is ASP.NET?
By using a programming language such as C# or Visual Basic, the code
written in these libraries can be invoked and used in web pages. ASP.net
files have the .aspx extension.

4. The following excerpt from Microsoft’s website best describes ASP.NET
in a single phrase: “ASP.net is a free, fully supported Web application
framework that helps you create standards-based Web solutions.
It provides a rich set of features and easy integration with
databases, web services and rich internet applications.
With features such as WebForms, MVC, dynamic data scaffolding, an
AJAX framework, templates and themes, hundreds of built in controls
and free developer tools, ASP.NET will enable you to build Web apps
better and faster.”
So, what exactly is ASP.NET? – Cont’d

5. There are many tools
that can help you check
your web application
performance, but
ASP.NET contains other
performance counters
that can be monitored.
So, what exactly is ASP.NET? – Cont’d
Also, this web application framework includes a tracing
feature in which you can monitor your code and discover any
errors related to the executed code.

6. ASP.NET Performance Counters
When you are monitoring your web applications, in addition to the
normal IIS counters, you can also monitor the following performance
counters available with ASP.NET:
• ASP.NETApplication Restarts – this is a value that represents
the total number of application restarts since the IIS server was
last stopped.
• ASP.NETApplications Running – the total number of ASP.NET
applications that are currently running on the web server.

7. ASP.NET Performance Counters – Cont’d
• ASP.NETRequest Execution Time – measures the number of
milliseconds taken to execute a request. This counter is
important in understanding how your application serves requests.
This counter should be monitored carefully because it may
indicate that either your app’s code is not efficient or there is a
slow performance on your web server which impacts the overall
performance of your ASP.NET applications.
• ASP.NETRequests Rejected – indicates the total number of
rejected applications.

8. ASP.NET Performance Counters – Cont’d
• ASP.NETRequests Queued – the total number of ASP.NET
requests that are waiting to be executed.
• ASP.NET ApplicationsRequests/Sec – this value represents the
number of ASP.NET requests per second
• ASP.NERequests Current – this is the number of requests that
are currently managed by the ASP.NET ISAPI. This performance
counter will let the application accept requests until the maximum
threshold limit is reached. This counter is very helpful in
monitoring the total number of requests that impact your
application. Any value that is above the number defined in the
requestQueueLimit parameter (configured in the processModel)
will stop the application from accepting new requests.
• ASP.NET ApplicationsErrors Total – the total number of ASP.NET
errors

9. Preferred Performance Counters
There are so many
ASP.NET performance
counters that it is hard to
find the best combination
of performance counters
to be monitored, while not
impacting your server's
performance or creating a
huge list that cannot be
monitored by system
administrators.

10. Preferred Performance Counters – Cont’d
Most technical sources suggest the following performance counters
should be monitored with all ASP.NET applications:
• Processor(_Total)% Processor Time
• Process(aspnet_wp)% Processor Time
• Process(aspnet_wp)Private Bytes
• Process(aspnet_wp)Virtual Bytes
• Process(aspnet_wp)Handle Count
• Microsoft® .NET CLR Exceptions# Exceps thrown / sec
• ASP.NETApplication Restarts
• ASP.NETRequests Rejected
• ASP.NETWorker Process Restarts (not applicable to IIS 6.0)
• MemoryAvailable Mbytes
• Web ServiceCurrent Connections
• Web ServiceISAPI Extension Requests/sec

11. Preferred Performance Counters – Cont’d
We have already gone over some of these performance counters in
the last article, so now let’s focus on some of the new items shown
here.
The Microsoft® .NET CLR Exceptions# Exceps thrown /sec – this
counter measures the number of exceptions thrown by your ASP.NET
applications. In normal behavior web apps should not throw these
exceptions, so keeping an eye on this counter should alert of any
abnormal application performance.
As the number of thrown exceptions increases, the application’s
performance decreases. Your monitoring tool must be configured to
alert administrators if this value is more than 5% of the number of
requests per second.

12. There are many counters we will not get into, however these are the
counters that have a great impact on application performance. Besides
ASP.NET counters and application counters, there are others that should
be monitored carefully because they indicate the overall resource
utilization on your web server:
• Processor counter - %Processor Time% – this counter indicates
the percentage of time threads are using system processors. The
maximum threshold for this counter is 70%; any value above this
limit indicates that either your applications are not performing well
or your hardware components should be upgraded. Remember
that this counter measures the performance of all processes
running on the IIS server.
Even More Performance Counters!

13. • Memory counter – Available Mbytes – this counter measures the
amount of physical RAM available. If there is less than 20% free
of the physical memory, consider replacing some hardware
components.
• Process Counters – these are counters that measure the
performance of a single process
• %Processor Time% – this is the percentage of CPU resources
that a single process is using.
Even More Performance Counters! – Cont’d

14. • Private Bytes – committed memory used by a process. An
abnormal value can indicate memory leaking. Each worker
process is instantiated within a process, so monitor these
counters carefully. If the physical memory used by a process is
more than 60% and the virtual memory is close to 1.6 GB of a
virtual address space of 4 GB, it will start affecting your server’s
performance.
• Thread Count – this indicates the number of threads active in a
process.
• Handle Count – the number of handles in a process. This should
be under 10000.
Even More Performance Counters! – Cont’d

15. Any Suggestions for Other ASP.NET Counters to Monitor?
This should cover most of the important aspects of monitoring ASP.NET.
Remember, there are an incredible amount of counters that can be
monitored. We hope to have covered the most crucial ones here.
However, if you feel there are any we left out that could be very important
to others, please feel free to post your thoughts below in our comments
section.
Thanks, and stay tuned for our last of this 3 part series, regarding
monitoring SQL Server. Cheers!
Stay tuned the next article, "How to Monitor ASP.NET" in this series from
Network Wrangler.
Author: Popescu Dan-Alexandru

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