Professional Microsoft IIS 8

Additional Built-In Tools

Windows Server 2012 has several built-in tools that complement IIS troubleshooting. These tools are essential to isolating and solving the many types of issues that the system administrator is faced with. Many of these have been around since previous versions of Windows, some for many years, but their longevity just demonstrates their value all the more. This section includes tools that are either available out-of-the-box or as a separate install.

Task Manager

Task Manager is an old-time favorite that most administrators are familiar with. There is no quicker way to get a good handle on the current state of a server than to fire up Task Manager. Needless to say, it should be one of the first tools to look at during any troubleshooting, often before IIS Manager is started. You can access it quickly by right-clicking on the taskbar and selecting Task Manager.

Task Manager gives a quick overview of the system resources of the server. With Windows Server 2012, you can see not only the CPU and running applications, but also the disk usage, the network usage, and the resources used by Windows services.

The Processes and Performance tabs are often the most useful, but there is important information in each of the tabs. The Processes tab shows detailed information for the worker processes running on the server. The Performance tab shows two real-time graphs: one of the CPU and the other of the memory usage. You can also see a summary of the physical and kernel ...