Webgarden

[DrBytes]

Hello, I have a question about webgardens.
As I understand it, a webgarden is physically one box with multiple
processors in it.
In the MSDN documentation about webgardens they mention :
"If webGarden is set to true, by default, all CPUs are enabled and ASP.NET
starts one process for each CPU"

Ok.. So this means that when I have a box with 2 processors it will actually
create a worker process for every CPU.
Does this mean that this box will have 2 sessions to manage?

I know there is MSSQL and StateServer to store session in 1 place and share
them accross CPU's but I would rather use the InProc equivalent on this box,
just to make sure that there is only one session created that spans the 2
CPUs.
Does anybody know how to accomplish this not using SQLServer or Stateserver?

thanks in advance,
--yves

[John M Deal]

There is two separate processes, two separate sessions, and two separate
application objects. We learned this the hard way. If you want keep a
single machine from having user experience anomalies do yourself a favor
and at least setup StateServer on the same machine as the website.
You'll take a hit for crossing the processes but by placing it on the
same machine you won't have to take the hit of going to the network. The
performance hit is not severe unless you are trying to serialize huge
amounts of data. The biggest issue involved is usually related to
rewriting any non-serializable objects so that they can be serialized
across the process boundary (both SQLServer and StateServer require
that). Sorry the news isn't better.

Of course there is always the option of disabling webgardens for the
website and running multiple machines to get the same performance boost,
but then you have to deal with webfarm setup, sticky IP management,
and/or the same session management issues.

Have A Better One!

John M Deal, MCP
Necessity Software

DrBytes wrote:

Hello, I have a question about webgardens.
As I understand it, a webgarden is physically one box with multiple
processors in it.
In the MSDN documentation about webgardens they mention :
"If webGarden is set to true, by default, all CPUs are enabled and ASP.NET
starts one process for each CPU"

Ok.. So this means that when I have a box with 2 processors it will actually
create a worker process for every CPU.
Does this mean that this box will have 2 sessions to manage?

I know there is MSSQL and StateServer to store session in 1 place and share
them accross CPU's but I would rather use the InProc equivalent on this box,
just to make sure that there is only one session created that spans the 2
CPUs.
Does anybody know how to accomplish this not using SQLServer or Stateserver?

thanks in advance,
--yves

[DrBytes]

Thank for the answer John.
Too bad that I have to install stateserver just to share the Session.

Are there other ways around this? For instance, returning the Session to the
correct CPU during postbacks, etc?
This way I can have the bi CPU setup but not lose the session..

Thanks,

--yves

"John M Deal" wrote:

There is two separate processes, two separate sessions, and two separate
application objects. We learned this the hard way. If you want keep a
single machine from having user experience anomalies do yourself a favor
and at least setup StateServer on the same machine as the website.
You'll take a hit for crossing the processes but by placing it on the
same machine you won't have to take the hit of going to the network. The
performance hit is not severe unless you are trying to serialize huge
amounts of data. The biggest issue involved is usually related to
rewriting any non-serializable objects so that they can be serialized
across the process boundary (both SQLServer and StateServer require
that). Sorry the news isn't better.

Of course there is always the option of disabling webgardens for the
website and running multiple machines to get the same performance boost,
but then you have to deal with webfarm setup, sticky IP management,
and/or the same session management issues.

Have A Better One!

John M Deal, MCP
Necessity Software

DrBytes wrote:

Hello, I have a question about webgardens.
As I understand it, a webgarden is physically one box with multiple
processors in it.
In the MSDN documentation about webgardens they mention :
"If webGarden is set to true, by default, all CPUs are enabled and ASP.NET
starts one process for each CPU"

Ok.. So this means that when I have a box with 2 processors it will actually
create a worker process for every CPU.
Does this mean that this box will have 2 sessions to manage?

I know there is MSSQL and StateServer to store session in 1 place and share
them accross CPU's but I would rather use the InProc equivalent on this box,
just to make sure that there is only one session created that spans the 2
CPUs.
Does anybody know how to accomplish this not using SQLServer or Stateserver?

thanks in advance,
--yves

[John M Deal]

We tried to find information on "sticky cpu" and weren't able to. We
brought this to our sys admins and they weren't able to either, nor were
they willing to user a support item to get an answer from Microsoft
given that StateServer gave us a way around the issue. We ended up
going with StateServer as our fall back.

You may want to take the question of whether or not you can do this to
an IIS user group and see if anyone there knows. Sorry I couldn't help
further on this.

John M Deal, MCP
Necessity Software

DrBytes wrote:

Thank for the answer John.
Too bad that I have to install stateserver just to share the Session.

Are there other ways around this? For instance, returning the Session to the
correct CPU during postbacks, etc?
This way I can have the bi CPU setup but not lose the session..

Thanks,

--yves

"John M Deal" wrote:

There is two separate processes, two separate sessions, and two separate
application objects. We learned this the hard way. If you want keep a
single machine from having user experience anomalies do yourself a favor
and at least setup StateServer on the same machine as the website.
You'll take a hit for crossing the processes but by placing it on the
same machine you won't have to take the hit of going to the network. The
performance hit is not severe unless you are trying to serialize huge
amounts of data. The biggest issue involved is usually related to
rewriting any non-serializable objects so that they can be serialized
across the process boundary (both SQLServer and StateServer require
that). Sorry the news isn't better.

Of course there is always the option of disabling webgardens for the
website and running multiple machines to get the same performance boost,
but then you have to deal with webfarm setup, sticky IP management,
and/or the same session management issues.

Have A Better One!

John M Deal, MCP
Necessity Software

DrBytes wrote:

Hello, I have a question about webgardens.
As I understand it, a webgarden is physically one box with multiple
processors in it.
In the MSDN documentation about webgardens they mention :
"If webGarden is set to true, by default, all CPUs are enabled and ASP.NET
starts one process for each CPU"

Ok.. So this means that when I have a box with 2 processors it will actually
create a worker process for every CPU.
Does this mean that this box will have 2 sessions to manage?

I know there is MSSQL and StateServer to store session in 1 place and share
them accross CPU's but I would rather use the InProc equivalent on this box,
just to make sure that there is only one session created that spans the 2
CPUs.
Does anybody know how to accomplish this not using SQLServer or Stateserver?

thanks in advance,
--yves