IIS Server Performance Monitoring and Web Server Monitoring Tools

IIS monitoring is the process of tracking and measuring the performance of your Microsoft IIS server over time to maintain optimal service delivery. IIS web servers are an integral part of any Windows IT structure. Outlook, SharePoint, and general web activity may rely on the server being available and optimally performing.

With IIS web server performance monitoring, you can help make sure the server is performing as expected as well as more easily locate the source of performance problems when they do occur. Proactively monitoring IIS server performance can allow you identify issues before they significantly impact websites and application pools.

There are some small but important differences to consider when monitoring performance for Apache vs IIS:

Apache is a free, open-source web server software used across numerous platforms. It’s used most frequently with Linux and is a popular web server software option. Microsoft IIS is another widely used, free web server software, but is also closed-source and used with Windows systems.

Given Apache is open-source, anyone can create and publish new modules extending the software’s functions. With IIS, Windows and Microsoft release new additions to the software. This major difference between Apache and IIS can have an impact on overall server functionality.

When it comes to monitoring IIS compared to Apache, it’s important to focus on tracking key metrics offering insights to allow you to head off and quickly resolve performance issues for a specific server type. This includes monitoring for server-specific health issues related to the identical-node architecture in Apache Cassandra, which can include monitoring latency, disk usage, thread pool tasks, and key and row cache values.

IIS web server monitoring typically consists of two key counters:

1. System-related counters – involve monitoring elements of the system like CPU, memory, and disk performance, all of which could be the source of a bottleneck in an IIS server
2. Web server counters – involve monitoring different web server caches as well as web service in general, which can tell you about the volume of data being exchanged and the number of users accessing your web service

Using a real-time IIS web server monitoring tool can provide you with insights on important elements of the system and server designed to help you improve server performance, increase throughput, reduce bottlenecks, and support faster identification of connectivity issues.

If a website and web applications experience excessive response times or timeouts because of IIS request slowdowns, end users will likely either leave your website or flood you with help desk tickets. IIS monitoring is important because it can help you maintain fast response time on your servers to keep your business running without interruption.

Monitoring IIS can also help you diagnose potential server performance issues before you start getting complaints from end users. This diagnosing ability is central to maintaining the applications critical to your business, including Outlook Web Access, SharePoint, and Microsoft Dynamics.

An IIS monitoring tool works by collecting essential IIS performance monitoring metrics and is designed to make this information more actionable for you. With IIS monitoring software, you can see all the collected information about different elements of your IIS servers in one place and gain powerful insights into how the servers are functioning.

SolarWinds Server Performance & Configuration Bundle is built to help you remedy IIS performance issues with ease. The included tools in SPCB, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor and Server Configuration Monitor, are designed to form a powerful IIS monitoring tool solution to provide comprehensive insights into the causes of server problems, making it easier to ensure your server is performing optimally and to troubleshoot problems before they impact end users.

Included in SAM is AppInsight^™ for IIS, a tool built to automatically monitor your IIS environment, from the websites and application pools running on your IIS server to your general web server performance. The AppInsight for IIS dashboard helps make monitoring IIS easier by providing at-a-glance performance metrics for your application pools and websites and allows you to drill down deeper. As you find and fix issues, stopping and restarting servers as needed, the AppInsight for IIS data is designed to automatically update, so you can feel confident the information on the dashboard is current.