Performance Troubleshooting EPiServer CMS Web Sites Steve Celius – EPiServer Geek.

Slide 1Performance Troubleshooting EPiServer CMS Web Sites Steve Celius – EPiServer Geek Slide 2The Different Approaches to Performance »This presentation focuses on troubleshooting existing sites with performance problems - Finding the cause and what you can do about it - The tools you need, and the common causes »Performance is much much more - Clientside (everything not in your aspx) can be 80% of the download time (when youre not having server trouble) - Ill cover this the next time 2 Slide 3Agenda »Identifying the problem - Slow you said? »Pinpointing the cause - Time to bring out the tools »Fixing it - Nasty fixes and nice fixes »Common problems - Avoid the problems in the first place - Best practices 3 Slide 4Slow sites have one or more of these problems »One or more pages takes long time to load »Timeouts & hangs »Crashes, constantly need reboots »Angry editors 4 Slide 5The cost of fixing performance problems 5 Thanks to Stuart Tuppert Slide 6Finding the slow parts of your site »Analyse IIS Logs - Check time_taken, # requests per hour / min (find the peaks) - Check for errors (404 / 500 status) »LogParser & Visual Log Parser - Find the most requested pages - Find errors and long running requests - Easier with Visual LogParserVisual LogParser »Use Fiddler »Performance Monitor - Lots of information on the net - Check cpu, req/s and req. queue 6 Slide 7Common Performance Problems 7 Slide 8The Large List Problem »Large collections of pages will kill performance »Understanding the cache is important - GetPage / GetChildren gets copies of PageData objects - Memory and CPU intense (lots of allocations and deallocations) »Dynamic Properties – are they really neccessary? »Pages with large strings (MainBody) is also a problem »News archives will slowly kill your site »Edit mode, expanding the tree loads two levels 8 Slide 9Key Points »The devil is in the details - You dont TRULY know until you have profiled »Things changes with content - What does not hurt you today might hurt you tomorrow »Make sure you optimize the important things 9 Slide 10Fixing it! »Split up page lists with more then 250 pages into subtrees - Why 250? Practical reasons for editors - Use Date Containers (/News/2007/June/My-news-article) - Moving pages using code is easy You dont even need to recompile (no code behind file neccessary). See ArchiveBuilder.aspx If there are many pages, it will take some time »Cache the list »Move Dynamic Properties to the Start Page »This problem has less impact in CMS 5 10 Slide 11FindPagesWithCriteria (FPWC) »The most resource intensive operation in EPiServer »Very useful, and most sites need it »It will search the database, returning all pages that match the criterias »With great power comes great responsibility 11 Slide 12Fixing it! »Use log4net to detect FPWC calls - Log all FPWC calls to one file, with page id and search ref »Limit the use of FPWC - Always think of alternative solutions - Limit the count of returned pages. The database call is not the problem, working with a large resultset is »Cache what you can cache - Enter EPiCode Cache Framework... 12 Slide 13EPiCode Cache Framework for EPiServer 4 »All sites will have some complex and/or heavy queries (not only FPWC) »You should recognize them when you write the code »Prevent these queries to run too often, cache the result »Designed for low impact on existing code »Download from: - www.coderesort.com/p/epicode/wiki/CacheFramework 13 Slide 14Other Fixes 14 Slide 15Use output caching »Configurable, turn on in web.config »Will cache the html output from your pages »Can give you extreme performance »Whole cache is invalidated on page publishing »Not available for logged in users and POST »VaryBy – dont vary by browser if you do not have to »/3GB in boot.ini (?) »It wont fix your problems though 15 Slide 16Beware of what you cannot see »RSS Feeds in particular - Long lists, requested often - Check the IIS log file - Use the cache framework »Bots, Crawlers and Spiders - They might fill our output cache - Will visit the uninteresting pages, like the sitemap and news archive. Pages you hope no one visits 16 Slide 17Scale out »Buy more hardware »Load balance on several servers »Especially if the load is the problem »Requires cache invalidation and file sync »Session state (are you using it?) - State Server or SQL Server 17 Slide 18Migrate to EPiServer CMS 5 »You will need to rewrite some of the code »The Migration Tool helps with data migration - This is another presentation altogether »See Marek Blotnys excellent blog post on EPiServer 5 vs. EPiServer 4.61EPiServer 5 vs. EPiServer 4.61 - CMS 5 scales much better 18 Slide 19Important Tools »Fiddler »JetBrains DotTrace »WebLoad / Jmeter / WAPT Load Testing »log4net »Trace Diagnostics »IIS Diagnostics »ASP.NET Viewstate Helper »Performance Viewer (Windows) »LogParser & Visual Log Parser »IIS Traffic Monitor 19 Slide 20»Special offer to all EPiServer Developer Summit 2008 attendees »Extended trial period (10 30 days) »Offer lasts for 30 days – from now! »Read more, download evaluation and order on: http://www.jetbrains.com/profiler »Eval and Coupon code: 20 b4zLrhD/g23bNieHrY8oV6EIezUiCzad Slide 21Misc... 21 Slide 22Release Mode »Compile the site in Release Mode (in VS) » in web.config »This will give you ~10% performance gain »ASP.NET will not time out with debug = true - Just as important as the performance gain »WebResources.axd scripts can be cached »Site will use less memory 22 Slide 23Enterprise Gotcha »Same source code, many different web sites - One place to deploy code - One config file to update »But... - Config changes will restart all sites This is heavy lifting! - Logging with log4net is a pain All sites uses same config, with file locking, first site to start wins. Without locking, log file is a mess - One change affects all sites, needs recompiling 23 Slide 24Enterprise Gotcha, contd. »Use deployment scripts to copy files to all sites - With delays to allow recompilation and startup peaks - This also goes for web.config 24 Slide 25IIS Settings »Log more - Review the IIS log settings. Turn on most log settings - Remember time-taken »Process Recycling – dont rely on it - It will only help on memory or resource leaks, temporarily - More often used on.NET 1.0/1.1 sites than 2.0 and up »Web Gardens - No, no and no! It can actually hurt performance 25 Slide 26Virtual Servers »If youre running VMware or Virtual PC you should see higher cpu utilization »Make sure you allow the server to use all its allocated memory »Virtualization is good for scaling out quickly 26 Slide 27Minimize Viewstate »Think Green - Save Bandwidth 27 www.binaryfortress.com/aspnet-viewstate-helper Slide 28Links »Performance Tuning and Optimization of EPiServer CMS (Fredrik Haglund)Performance Tuning and Optimization of EPiServer CMS »EPiServer 5 vs. EPiServer 4.61 part I - GetPage() (Marek Blotny)EPiServer 5 vs. EPiServer 4.61 part I - GetPage() »The challenges of a high traffic site with EPiServer (Adam Najmanowicz)The challenges of a high traffic site with EPiServer »Performance Pitfalls in EPiServer (Mats Hellström)Performance Pitfalls in EPiServer »The Output Cache - When and Why (Daniel van den Tempel)The Output Cache - When and Why »Caching Custom Data in EPiServerCaching Custom Data in EPiServer »EPiServer LabsEPiServer Labs 28 Slide 29Per Request Cache »Dont do expensive operations more than once in a request »Example: - Checking if the current page is in a given structure »Refactor into utililty methods »Keep the impact on existing code low »Store in HttpContext.Current.Items - Request bound, thread safe 29 Slide 30IIS Traffic Monitor »Analyses IIS log files on the fly »Simple and quick to use »Uses Log Parser 2.2 30 http://niknak.org/software/IIsTrafficMonitor Slide 31Use Fiddler to see real traffic »Server performance is important, but dont neglect the client side performance »Check the Yahoo Performance Blog (and YSlow) - Percieved performance is also important! »Make sure the clients cache effiently 31 Slide 3232