Hi Randy

There are quite a few factors that could be affecting the stability of your site - Are you seeing any info/errors in the logs /app_data/logs and do you have FCN mode set to single or disabled?

That is the first thing I would check in your web.config

   <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" enableVersionHeader="false" targetFramework="4.5" maxRequestLength="51200" fcnMode="Single" />

I would change it to be

   <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" enableVersionHeader="false" targetFramework="4.5" maxRequestLength="51200" fcnMode="Disabled" />

and see if this makes a difference to the stability....

(changes to the site templates won't be picked up until an application pool recycle is made, with fcnMode disabled, but often on 7.4/7.5 this will prevent the site from struggling performance wise)

regards

Marc

Thanks Marc!

Yeah, I've been checking everything; logs, Live Metrics Stream, Performance, CPU, and just don't see anything consistent with requests; we get low requests (under 10) and sites struggles.

Anyway, didn't quite see what you recommend to set FCN to. Its currently set to "Single"

<system.web>
    <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" />
    <trace enabled="false" requestLimit="10" pageOutput="false" traceMode="SortByTime" localOnly="true" />
    <httpRuntime requestValidationMode="2.0" enableVersionHeader="false" targetFramework="4.5" maxRequestLength="51200" fcnMode="Single" />

Should I set it to "disabled"?

Also, when you say changes won't be picked up until an application pool recycle...is there a way I can force this?

Thanks again Randy

Hi Randy

Sorry didn't highlight the code blocks!

Yes switch it to disabled, to see if helps stabilise the site, you can always turn it back to single, if it makes no difference. (fcn mode info: https://shazwazza.com/post/all-about-aspnet-file-change-notification-fcn/)

It depends on how you are updating your site, if you are updating templates via the backoffice, you can install a plugin called 'God Mode' that has a button to force the recycling: https://our.umbraco.com/packages/developer-tools/diplo-god-mode/

Out of interest do you have any other packages/plugins installed on the site?

regards marc

Hi Randy,

Are you using Models Builder and if so, which one? PureLive or DLL etc?

@Marc I did update FCN to Disabled. I also scaled up to S3 (on recommendation). I would have preferred not to scale up until we found the exact cause but it does seem like performance has improved.

Regarding packages/plugins, I wasn't part of the install of our instance...taking it over. But looking at Developers>Installed packages looks like we just have Gather Content and Txt Starter kit.

I noticed on the "Running Umbraco on Azure Web Apps" ariticle on Umbraco, it recommends under "Umbraco XML cache file and other TEMP files" to "Umbraco XML config file is stored on the local server".

Should I do this? Does this have any affect on performance?

@Harry Thanks for your response. I don't believe we're using either. Are these packages? Since I don't see these in Developers/Installed Packages does this mean we don't have them?

Will these help performance?

Marc,

Thanks so much for all this...this is great! We just migrated to Azure Web App in Oct and though response wasn't good, it was too much of a big deal since not much traffic.

Now that we have a new marketing company (and new owner), response times are crucial. So again thank you so much!

I completely forget about the region, I'll definitely take at look at that.

Regarding "umbracoContentXMLUseLocalTemp", I was in process of implementing this. Can you 1) provide a sample of how to add this to the web config? I believe this goes in Umbraco's config? I searched google to find example of what tag this goes but can't find it, 2) I recall seeing an article that explained how to confirm this settings is working; meaning, I vaguely recall it saying there's a folder where files are written to when this is enabled. So basically if I see files there, then it confirms this setting is correct

Thanks Randy

Hi Randy

It is an 'appSetting' within the web.config

so find <appSettings

and you'll see a bunch of other Umbraco settings

<add key="umbracoConfigurationStatus" value="7.4.3" />
<add key="umbracoReservedUrls" value="~/config/splashes/booting.aspx,~/install/default.aspx,~/config/splashes/noNodes.aspx,~/VSEnterpriseHelper.axd" />
<add key="umbracoReservedPaths" value="~/umbraco,~/install/" />

so check if the setting already exists, and if it doesn't add it to this section

<add key="umbracoContentXMLUseLocalTemp" value="true" />  

regards

Marc

Hi Marc,

Thanks again for all your help. So it looks like we may have found the issue. Although, Scale Out to S3 definitely helped.

I noticed from the beginning we do get a lot of log messages; 404s, etc. But didn't seem like this was causing performance issue....just logs...how can that affect performance.

Well, since so many messages were being written, it looks like our Service App Log4net was spending so much time writing messages and subsequently was affecting the performance.

After disabling it, our site now screams.

Though, this is a temporary fix. My next task is to fix the 404s (a lot of Umbraco; umbraco/ping, etc.) and figure a better way of enabling logging without it affecting performance.

Thanks again Randy

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