Make Your IIS Server Run Faster

IIS is the web server developed by Microsoft. The versions of IIS are: IIS 1.0, Windows NT 3.51 available as a free add-on, IIS 2.0, Windows NT 4.0, IIS 3.0, Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3, IIS 4.0, Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack, IIS 5.0, Windows 2000, IIS 5.1, Windows XP Professional, IIS 6.0, Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, IIS 7.0, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.

Making IIS to run faster and better is easier than you think. From the Internet Services Manager you may change a few parameters.

First we'll start with Performance Tab. If you know how many visitors are expected per day for your website, change Performance Tuning based on the number of hits per day. If you expect less than 100.000 visitors per day or even less than 10.000, change the setting according to your website. Also, if you have a small website, change the settings for Bandwidth throttling and Process throttling. Bandwidth throttling controls the bandwidth available for your website and Process throttling controls the CPU use.

From Website tab, you may change the Connection Timeout. Default is 900s, but for LAN you can set it to a lower value.

Also, you can set the Application Protection state. If you set it to High (Isolated), your web server will run slower and if you set the state to Low(IIS Process), your server will run faster, but unsecured.

Also, you can optimize IIS using regedit and modifying some registry settings stored in: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSetServices/Inetinfo/Parameters :
- MaxPoolThreads - if you are using PHP in CGI mode, you may increase the value. This setting determines how many CGI applications can run concurrently.
- ListenBackLog should be increased to the number of concurrent connections you want. The default value is 15 and you can increase it to 250.
- MemCacheSize - By default, IIS will use 50% of available memory. Increase the percent only if you don't have other critical applications installed on the server.

I hope this small guide will make your server run faster. Enjoy.