IIS + Plesk queue problem

Question

I have a dedicated server running on Plesk Panel for Windows. The server has 8GB ram and seems to be getting slower due to high connection queue I think.

I'm running 8GB RAM on Quad-Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 1354.

Other than adding more hardware, what are some of the ways to improve response times and/or monitor what is causing the bottleneck?

Right now many sites on the default pool, when I load them up, are getting stuck at the "waiting for reply". Often times websites will take 10 seconds to respond.

I've been recommended to give each website its own dedicated application pool. However I do have about 350 sites on the server. With this amount of memory, do you recommend using this method to make the server run faster? Would it run out of memory with only 8GB RAM?

Answer 1

Make Better Websites

You can improve your websites. You can use tools like firebug, yslow or fiddler to determine what content or request is slowing the site. Also take a look at some best practices. This is usually the best solution in lieu of more hardware.

Refs:

Yahoo Best Practices

Firebug for Firefox

YSlow for Firebug

Fiddler for Everything

Monitor Hardware Performance

On the server side you can take a look at performance monitoring to see if the slowdown is isolated at a specific hardware component such as disk writes/ques, processor, memory or network interfaces.

Used Dedicated Application Pools

I do recommend using dedicated application pools for each site. This way you can either monitor the usage of each pool to help find the culprit and/or restrict processor usage.