How to use IIS Manager to get Worker Processes (w3wp.exe)

W3wp.exe High CPU Utilization

The default IIS 6 setting for an application is shutdown worker processes after being idle for 20 minutes. So when a new request comes after 30 minutes of being idle, IIS will start and initialized the worker
process again. It wills JIT compile every method in your application at first access. So you will experience a great delay on first access. You can change this setting (and other performance settings) from IIS manager, under Application Pools.

Get Worker Processes ( w3wp.exe) List :

To get list of running  worker process, Open IIS Manager ( Run > Inetmgr ), Select root level from left site navigation tree and from “Features View Panel” select “Worker Processes”

Click on the “Worker Processes” to get details of all worker process which are currently running as shown in below.

So from the above list of worker processes you can get the details of Application Pool Name, Process ID, state of worker processes along with CPU uses and memory uses.

Web application hosted on multiple server and access based on the load on servers is called Web Farms and When a single Application pool contain multiple Worker process is called web garden.

Create Web Garden in IIS 6 and IIS 7

Now, I am going to show how you can change the Number of Worker process In both IIS 6 and IIS 7.  For IIS 6,  Right Click on Application Pool > Properties > Goto  Performance Tab.

In the “Performance Tab” Section you would have one option called “Web Garden” where worker process sets to “1”, you can set the number of worker process that you required.

For IIS 7, Right Click on Application Pool > Go To Advance Settings > In Process Model section, you will have “Maximum Worker Processes” . You can change it more than 1 to make it as web garden.

Advantages of Web Garden:

• Provides better application availability by sharing request between multiple worker process.
  
• Web garden use processor affinity where application can swapped out based on preference and tag setting.
  
• Less consumption of physical space for web garden configuration.
  

  http://abhijitjana.net/2010/11/04/how-to-use-iis-manager-to-get-worker-processes-w3wp-exe-details-information/

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