w3wp.exe has high cpu usage on every request

Question

I'm running a Windows 2008 server (a VPS with 1GB of RAM), with SQL Server Express and IIS 7 installed. On it I'm hosting a NopCommerce 1.7 website, with a database of around 26 000 products.

Right now I'm the only user of the website (it's in development) and I'm getting rather bad performance from it. To be more specific every time I make a request, the worker process goes to 90-100% CPU usage for a few seconds. Is it me or this is a lot for a 1 user NopCommerce website? Any ideas why this happens and what I can do to rectify it or further investigate?

PS: the worker process uses between 100MB-400MB of memory (private working set), and SQL Server with this database, around 160MB. Do you have any suggestions other then the obvious one to get more RAM? I intend to get one more GB but I fear this will not solve the cpu usage problem.

Answer 1

You've already stated you're going to get more RAM, but don't be surprised how much a lack of RAM can impact the CPU. If your RAM is not able to hold large objects efficiently because of lack of space (and I'd say using 40% of available RAM qualifies), then the CPU has to work harder to page things in and out of virtual memory. 90% is a little overkill for this, but with the server specs you give it's not impossible.

The most likely problem is that there is a hole in your code somewhere. My guess is that you have either an infinite loop or a direct memory leak (resources open during requests that aren't closed perhaps?). Your best bet would be to get the IIS Debug Diagnostics tool, install it and set up reports to find out what is going on directly on the server.

Answer 2

Maybe this will help:
CPU Settings for an Application Pool IIS6 e IIS7
How To: Collect a Crash dump of an IIS worker process on IIS 7.0 (and above)
Running IIS7 worker processes under debugger
Troubleshooting Failed Requests Using Tracing in IIS 7
Psscor2 Managed-Code Debugging Extension for WinDbg
Using ProcDump.exe to monitor w3wp.exe for CPU spikes