ASP.Net Increases MaxProcesses (Web Garden) Using State Server and Caching

Question

I have an ASP.Net site on IIS7, and I plan to increase MaxProcesses to match the number of cores on the server (4 cores, 64-bit Windows Server 2008).

From what I read, if I increase MaxProcesses to create a web garden, I need to install a state server outside the process, so I plan to use the ASPState service to exchange sessions between workflows.

But is there something that I don’t understand if Caching is shared? Or do I need to install a new custom cache provider?

Answer 1

The in-process cache is never used in a web garden.

But here the REAL thing ... I doubt the motives of what you are doing. If an object needs to use your kernels more efficiently, you can simply increase the number of requests and / or worker threads that you manage your ASP.NET application. Running multiple w3wp processes is not necessary. If you have a limited resource, such as an old COM object in a process that does not scale well with threads, then I can see how you can scale better with several processes. But if you really do not know what you are doing and why, carefully step back from this setting and leave it at 1 .; -)

Answer 2

Caching is not used. The web garden creates several w3wp processes. Each process will have its own cache.

Answer 3

If you want to share the cache, use something like MemCached Win32 (with the Enyim cache client) or use the new MS Velocity product. Thus, as soon as you move beyond the limits of one server, you will already be tuned to the architecture for its processing.