IIS: Internet Information Services

Author: - Sravan Tadakamalla

Tadikis@yahoo.com

What is IIS?

IIS (Internet Information Services) is a most popular web server. It is a collection of

internet-based services for servers.

How it is useful in performance testing?

It has built in a very fast and useful logging mechanism to enable project teams to address
performance issues in production and in performance testing.

IIS stores the log files in the specified format. By default, it is stored in W3C Extended
Log File Format.

We use IIS 6.0 log files to identify performance issues in performance testing. This
information can also be compared to production data for verification.

There are many benefits in analyzing IIS log files. First, it can be used in production as
well as in performance testing. It enables a production comparison to verify performance
testing results. Second, it can be easily understood by business managers and
performance testers. It bridges a gap of communication. The performance tester can
easily identify performance bottleneck and correlate them to business value using data
derived from IIS log files. Third, it provides many technical insights into the system
based on how you slice and dice the raw data. These technical insights are tremendously
useful in solving performance bottlenecks.

What do we do with the log files?

• Setup and collect IIS log files.

• Analyze IIS log files information and focus on areas of improvement in a systematic
manner.
• Make business and technical decisions based on IIS log files information.

A systematic approach to collect and analyze IIS log files is:

Step 1: Setting up IIS Log File

1a: How to set up IIS Log File
1b: When to set up IIS Log File
Step 2: Importing or Parsing IIS Log File
Step 3: Analyzing IIS Log Files
3a: Simple Network Analysis
3b: Simple Response Time Analysis

Step 1:Setting up IIS Log File

(a)How to set up IIS Log File

First, you have to start the Internet Information Service (IIS) Manager. On
Windows Server 2003, it is Start -> All Programs -> Administrative Tools ->
Internet Information Service.

Second, it is per web site setting. You can select the web site and right click
Properties. The corresponding web site’s property page will pop up:

* Enable logging – It should be checked to enable logging. You must be a member

of the Administrators group on the local computer to enable logging.
* Active log format – The default is “W3C Extended Log File Format”. We will
focus on this using this format. We need to use “W3C Extended Log File Format”
because it has advanced options for tracking performance issues. The other
supported formats are: Microsoft IIS Log File Format, NCSA Common Log File
Format and ODBC Logging.
* Properties – Select this “Properties” button will enable us to continue and set
additional performance tracking options.

* New log schedule – The default is Daily. There are other settings based on time
interval and file size. It is your decision to choose one that is manageable in your
situation. Typically, the default of Daily is sufficient.
* Use local time for file naming and rollover – The default is checked. For
performance testing, please use local time to simplify. Only in rare occasions
when you need to correlate web server logs in different time zones, this setting
should be unchecked.
* Log file directory – This is where the log file would be written. Please note that
the actual log file would be written to a sub-directory. E.g.
C:\windows\system32\LogFiles\W3SVC1. The web site ID at the end is used to
identify the sub-directory. For each performance testing iteration, a separate
directory can be used for logging to organize results. E.g. d:\iislogs\test20061001,
d:\iislogs\test20061008. Use naming conventions based on your project team’s
habit.

*Advanced – The advanced option is only available when the “W3C Extended
Log File Format” is selected. The 3 options for tracking performance issues are
“Bytes Sent (sc-bytes)”, “Bytes Received (cs-bytes)” and “Time Taken (time-
taken)”. sc-bytes is the number of bytes going from server to client. cs-bytes is the
number of bytes going from client to server. Time-taken is the number of milli-
seconds of execution. To simplify, select all options for performance testing.
(b)When to set up IIS Log File

There are 3 situations when you need to set up the IIS Log File
1. In single user performance analysis – You should set up the IIS Log File and then
click through the user interface for a given scenario and then archive the single
user baseline. But if the application is slow in single user, there is no need to run
the stress test. Fix the single user performance problem first before proceeding in
stress test.
(This document will not discuss how to do single user performance analysis)
2. In stress test – You should set up the IIS Log File to assist in performance testing
using Visual Studio Team System. The analysis of the IIS Log File is based on the
system under stress. In ideal situation, it is best to keep a separate IIS Log File.
3. In production – You should set up the IIS Log File. Use the same analysis of the
IIS Log File and compare your production results with your performance testing
results. First, you can verify whether your presumption of your stress test
scenarios is correct. If you see 20% of users hitting URL A and 80% of users
hitting URL B, you should use similar ratios in your stress test. There is no perfect
match. Just try to be reasonable.

Step 2: Importing or Parsing IIS Log File

We can use 3 tools for parsing IIS Log File- Log Parser 2.2, Microsoft Excel and SQL
Server 2005 Enterprise Edition.

LogParser 2.2 is a powerful tool. You can download it from

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=890cd06b-abf8-4c25-
91b2-f8d975cf8c07&displaylang=en
you can find valuable support information from this site: http://www.logparser.com/

Using Microsoft Excel 2003

Here are the steps to import IIS log file to Excel for analysis. The following
instruction is based on Excel 2003:
* Launch Excel and select an empty worksheet
* Select from the menu “Data” -> ”Import External Data” -> “Import Data”
* Use “All Files” in Files of Type to view all files. Open the IIS Log File.
* Select “Delimited”. Click Next.
* Check “Space”. Click Next
* Use default and click Finish.
* Click OK
* Delete the extra information except headers. Delete cell A4 and shift cells left. If
there are additional headers within the content, you can sort column A and delete
excess information.
* You can then from the menu “Data” -> “Fitler” -> “Auto Filter”. Then, you can sort
the 3 important columns (bytes sent/bytes received/time taken), hide other columns
and use Excel functions to parse the data.
 Excel is a powerful tool for parsing IIS log file. However, there is a limitation of
65536 rows. You can use “Start Import at Row” option to skip rows and do the import
multiple times. However, Excel is mostly used in looking at small IIS Log File and to
parse IIS Log File quickly.

Step 3: Analyzing IIS Log Files

The final step is to make sense of the IIS Log File data in terms of performance
testing. Let’s say that you have run a stress test and you need to analyze the data. You
can look at the IIS Log File captured during the stress test.

(a) Simple Network Analysis - Network Analysis based on URL and parameter just
for ASPX
Arrange the Excel sheet data as following: order the entire data based on cs-uri-stem
and cs-uri-query in descending order. And select the top 20 list of these and also the
avg. of these 20 rows of sc-bytes and cs-bytes.( in the form of query - Select top 20
[cs-uri-stem],[cs-uri-query], avg([sc-bytes]) as [BytesSent,] avg ([cs-bytes]) as
[BytesReceived] from [PerfTestTable] group by [cs-uri-stem], [cs- uri-query] order
by [BytesSent] desc )
The action is to query the largest data transfer. Identify common large data transfer
performance problems
1. Large ViewState in ASP.NET. For example, put a report in Web Form Control. It
will generate a huge view state.
2. Large graphics. Use tools to reduce the graphics size.
3. Large amount of data displayed in table. Use paging to reduce the data transfer.

Also, most web pages have high bytes sent from the server to the browser and we
seldom see problem the other way around.

Please note that in this analysis, we do not see latency impact. The rule of thumb is to
reduce round trips. IIS Log file is not the ideal tool to check for network latency
impact.

(b) Simple Response Time Analysis

Count frequency, time taken based on URL just for ASPX. Group by URL and
Group by parameter
Consider the cs-uri-stem,cs-uri-query columns in the sheet, arrange them in the
descending order and see the values of them and also the no. of cs-uri-stem values are
there which ends with .aspx. Consider these as no. of hits.

The response time analysis can be done couple times to find out what the business
users think are acceptable load level and the acceptable response time.
The central idea is to use IIS Log File to judge how many requests have exceeded
threshold. It gives the business user an understanding. Also, remember that even
though there are some guidelines on response time acceptability, it is a subjective
issue.