Browse All Articles > IIS Site Warm Up
Hey folks, 'bout time for me to come around with a little tip.
Thanks to IIS 7.5 Extensions and Microsoft (well... really Windows 8, and IIS 8 I guess...), we can now prime our Application Pools, when IIS starts.
Now, though it would be nice to be able to simply plug it in and go, unfortunately this is not the case, and there is some configuring to do.
Please see here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1089/iis-80-application-initialization/
Now, this article is not about the IIS extension, this is about priming or warming up your site.
Now, this is not a necessity, but if you are like me, you take advantage of .Net's Runtime.Caching, so simply priming your App Pools may not be enough. My SRE (Site Rendering Engine) for one highly utilizes the server's in memory cache, as well as the Runtime.Cache, so the very first load takes a bit.
When we can prime the site itself, we can ensure that hits to it after the fact will be quick. Thus the need for a WarmUp.
What I've done is pretty simple, yet extremely effective in doing just this. All it does is fire up a WebClient, passes a valid User-Agent header, and pulls the site.
NOTE: This is not limited to IIS 7.5. It should work on any windows system, so long as it has the .Net 4 framework installed.
Here is some code for you all. Mind you it is a VS 2010 project, so I will attach the source files as well. Make sure to modify the Settings.xml file, just replace the url and page attributes with whatever you need to prime, you can add as many sites as you need.
It is a console application, so there are no buttons to push, there are 2 classes, and a settings file.
AuditManager.vb
WarmUpService.vb
And Settings.xml
Compile it up, let it run, and warmup your sites properly. Personally, I added a installer project, and simply added it to the server's startup so it runs everytime MS decided it needs to restart my machine for updates...
Thanks to IIS 7.5 Extensions and Microsoft (well... really Windows 8, and IIS 8 I guess...), we can now prime our Application Pools, when IIS starts.
Now, though it would be nice to be able to simply plug it in and go, unfortunately this is not the case, and there is some configuring to do.
Please see here: http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1089/iis-80-application-initialization/
Now, this article is not about the IIS extension, this is about priming or warming up your site.
Now, this is not a necessity, but if you are like me, you take advantage of .Net's Runtime.Caching, so simply priming your App Pools may not be enough. My SRE (Site Rendering Engine) for one highly utilizes the server's in memory cache, as well as the Runtime.Cache, so the very first load takes a bit.
When we can prime the site itself, we can ensure that hits to it after the fact will be quick. Thus the need for a WarmUp.
What I've done is pretty simple, yet extremely effective in doing just this. All it does is fire up a WebClient, passes a valid User-Agent header, and pulls the site.
NOTE: This is not limited to IIS 7.5. It should work on any windows system, so long as it has the .Net 4 framework installed.
Here is some code for you all. Mind you it is a VS 2010 project, so I will attach the source files as well. Make sure to modify the Settings.xml file, just replace the url and page attributes with whatever you need to prime, you can add as many sites as you need.
It is a console application, so there are no buttons to push, there are 2 classes, and a settings file.
AuditManager.vb
Public Class AuditManager
Public Enum AuditType
Exception
General
End Enum
Public Shared Function GetPath() As String
Return System.AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory()
End Function
Public Shared Sub Write(ByVal _Type As AuditType?, ByVal _Description As String, Optional ByVal _Location As String = Nothing, Optional ByVal _Except As Exception = Nothing)
Dim _Stack As System.Diagnostics.StackTrace
If _Except IsNot Nothing Then
_Stack = New System.Diagnostics.StackTrace(_Except, True)
Else
_Stack = Nothing
End If
Using _F As New IO.StreamWriter(GetPath() & FormatDateTime(Date.Now, DateFormat.ShortDate).Replace("/", String.Empty) & ".LOG", True)
Dim tmpString As New Text.StringBuilder
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("WHEN:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(Date.Now & vbCrLf)
If _Type.HasValue Then
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("TYPE:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append([Enum].GetName(GetType(AuditType), _Type) & vbCrLf)
End If
If _Location IsNot Nothing Then
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("LOCATION:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(_Location & vbCrLf)
End If
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
If _Stack IsNot Nothing Then
tmpString.Append("STACKTRACE:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(_Stack.ToString() & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("STACK FRAMES:" & vbCrLf)
For Each frame In _Stack.GetFrames()
tmpString.Append(" - FILE:" & frame.GetFileName() & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(" - METHOD:" & frame.GetMethod().Name & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(" - LINE:" & frame.GetFileLineNumber() & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(" - COLUMN:" & frame.GetFileColumnNumber() & vbCrLf)
Next
End If
If _Except IsNot Nothing Then
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("SOURCE:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(_Except.Source & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("MESSAGE:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(_Except.Message & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("DATA:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(_Except.Data.ToString() & vbCrLf)
End If
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("NOTES:" & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append(_Description & vbCrLf)
tmpString.Append("-------------------------------------------------" & vbCrLf)
_F.Write(tmpString.ToString())
_F.Close()
End Using
End Sub
End ClassWarmUpService.vb
Imports System.Reflection
Imports System.IO
Imports System.Net
Imports System.Threading.Tasks
Module WarmUpService
Private _SiteList As New List(Of Typing)
Public Sub Main()
AuditManager.Write(AuditManager.AuditType.General, "Fireing Up...")
DoTheWarmUp()
AuditManager.Write(AuditManager.AuditType.General, "All Set...")
End Sub
Private Sub DoTheWarmUp()
Try
Parallel.Invoke(Sub()
SetAllowUnsafeHeaderParsing20()
End Sub,
Sub()
Dim _X As XElement = XElement.Load(AuditManager.GetPath() & "Settings.xml")
_SiteList = (From n In _X...<Site>.AsParallel()
Select New Typing() With {
.Page = n.@page,
.Url = n.@url
}).ToList()
Parallel.ForEach(_SiteList, Sub(Item)
Using _WC As New WebClient()
_WC.Headers.Add("user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13")
_WC.DownloadData(Item.Url & Item.Page)
End Using
End Sub)
End Sub)
Catch ex As Exception
AuditManager.Write(AuditManager.AuditType.Exception, "There was an issue!", "DoTheWarmUp", ex)
End Try
End Sub
Private Sub SetAllowUnsafeHeaderParsing20()
Dim a As New System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSection
Dim aNetAssembly As System.Reflection.Assembly = Assembly.GetAssembly(a.GetType)
Dim aSettingsType As Type = aNetAssembly.GetType("System.Net.Configuration.SettingsSectionInternal")
Dim args As Object() = Nothing
Dim anInstance As Object = aSettingsType.InvokeMember("Section", BindingFlags.Static Or BindingFlags.GetProperty Or BindingFlags.NonPublic, Nothing, Nothing, args)
Dim aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing As FieldInfo = aSettingsType.GetField("useUnsafeHeaderParsing", BindingFlags.NonPublic Or BindingFlags.Instance)
aUseUnsafeHeaderParsing.SetValue(anInstance, True)
End Sub
Partial Public Class Typing
Public Property Url As String
Public Property Page As String
End Class
End ModuleAnd Settings.xml
<Settings>
<Site url="http://www.o7thwebdesign.com" page="/" />
<Site url="http://www.facchinifacchinipa.com" page="/" />
<Site url="http://skor.in" page="/" />
<Site url="http://o7t.in" page="/" />
</Settings>Compile it up, let it run, and warmup your sites properly. Personally, I added a installer project, and simply added it to the server's startup so it runs everytime MS decided it needs to restart my machine for updates...
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