Machine.config settings for ASP.NET

Former Member
Former Member $organization

Hello All,

I am tuning our web and API servers and I have documents from the 2008 conference as well as Microsoft articles with the recommendations for the <processModel> and <httpRuntime> attributes. There is one confusing bit of information that I hope someone can clear up.

For <processModel>, the recommendation is to set maxWorkerThreads and maxIoThreads to 100. The recommendation for <httpRuntime> (in web.config) is to set the minFreeThreads to 88*number of CPUs and to set the minLocalRequestFreeThreads parameter to 76*number of CPUs. The confusion lies in a configuration note that says:

"...Machine.config <processModel> maxWorkerThreads & maxIOThreads need to be greater than the minFreeThreads and minLocalRequestFreeThreads in web.config."

This recommendation conflicts with the suggestion to set minFreeThreads to 176 (88*2 CPUs) and the suggestion to set minLocalRequestFreeThreads to 152 (76*2 CPUs). This is larger that the recommended setting for maxWorkerThreads (100) and maxIoThreads (100).

Also, Microsoft says the the value range for those two parameters is 5-100.

Is there anyone that can clear this up for me?