Windows Hosting – Tracing Services and IIS 7

July 6, 2009 by Butterfly Filed under: Web Hosting

Servers are complex machines – orders of magnitude more complex that the PCs that run at our homes. Apart from the hardware, much of a server’s complexity arises from software interactions. So when you see even companies like Google displaying error messages, you know that something is wrong with the way their software is set up.

Due to the heavy load that servers experience, events that have a minuscule chance of occurring at any given point happen frequently. We have to get used it. What can be done however, is learning how to quickly deal with errors so that your IIS server doesn’t crash.

To this end, IIS 7 comes with sophisticated error tracing tools that allow you to get to the heart of the problem, thereby enabling you to fix it. So what are the common causes of these errors? Here are a few.

Application changes

A new update or bug fix to an existing application can have unexpected effects on the workings of even unrelated software. This is why Server administrators are paid so much. They know exactly what they’re doing and understand the inner guts of a server.

Server Configuration changes

IIS 7 has a lot of options and configurations. Sometimes, you might be forced to make a change that has unexpected ramifications, causing requests to fail.

Why Error Pages aren’t enough

When a web request fails, one can get very detailed error pages that sometimes lead to problems being resolved quickly. However, when the error is caused by interacting modules, error pages simply aren’t enough or are misleading. What can happen is that an error can occur and go unnoticed for a while and when it manifests itself, the real reason is hidden. Debugging is an art, but with the right tools, it can be done much faster. And this is where IIS 7 tracing comes into play.

IIS 7 Tracing

IIS 7 has sophisticated tracing tools that allow administrators to view the worker processes and their requests in real time. The new feature is called Failed Request Tracing and is one of the hallmarks of IIS 7. It’s completely configurable and can be used to trace requests based on certain parameters that are set by the administrator.

For example, and administer can set an alert and tell IIS 7 that if a request takes longer than x seconds to complete, then a trace needs to be initiated that will enable administrators to fix the problem. This command can also be used to fine tune the server and figure out where it is running slow.

If you’re using IIS 7 as a server in any environment including a VPS, you can use the trace features along with IIS 7 remote administration in order to effectively manage your server.