Implement Fail Whale Page IIS7 - iis-7

We are about to launch a website that might end up getting a lot of traction (or none). I wanted to get some feedback on the best approach to implement a Fail Whale type page should we get nuked and I need to bring up more servers etc.
I was going to do a fail-over load balance to a static page that would show up in the case the main servers are toast, but this that this is to simple an approach.
Any ideas or insight would be appreciated.

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Glimpse lost account of time? Slow web form requests

I just installed glimpse to try and track down some slow loading on pages that basically don't do much. This issue happens on local(not as bad though) but worse on pre production server.
I see the start request, then nothing.. then all the SQL and page cycles (yes, still damn web forms) all go quickly ~800ms. For an empty site that is is pretty shite but the problem is it takes 2,3 sometimes 6 seconds and I cannot work out why.
Anybody know how to work out the missing piece?
On the lifecycle it looks like its already delayed 1916.02ms What comes before the lifecycle of webforms?
Here are a few things you can look into:
Is this only happening on the first hit to the page? (IE: Is this JIT overhead?)
Do you have any HTTP Modules doing work during BeginRequest?
What about Global.asax and BeginRequest?
You can add System.Diagnostics.Trace.Write() statements in your BeginRequest and look at the Trace tab and Timeline tabs to get more information about the time in the red box.

What exact settings required in iis for asp.net pages to process it faster?

I am having a simple blank page without any source code.The page also taking very long time to come.I am not able to understand the reason behind this.
The domain is getting a high requests.
What exact settings needs to be done in iis 7.0 so that it will be faster.
Please help.
ASP.NET pages always have an initial delay when the first request is made after the file has been created/edited/uploaded because the server needs to recompile them, however it shouldn't be more than 2-3 seconds in practice, and does not affect subsequent pageloads.
The only thing I can think of is an overloaded server. Assuming you're on a shared hosting package then I recommend you find another ISP. If not, then I'm afraid there's a lot more to it than just a "page pages load faster" switch hidden away.

ASP.NET Browser Debug (support information) page

So one of the many many tasks I'm faced with daily as a developer is trying to get our support department to get as much information about the end users environment as possible.
Browser version, current cookies, plugins, etc etc and it would be handy to point people to a specific page on our site and say "copy paste this to support".
In the past I've always written these by hand, and used third party tools (such as BrowserHawk) to get as much info as possible.
How does everyone else deal with getting this information from end users, is there a nice package I'm unaware of to give a detailed dump a users env without having to get the users to run an app?
Just to clarify I'm not looking at an elmah style reporting (which is very helpful as well!) but this mainly for the client side stuff.
Some months ago I have see the googles ads page have a cool nice report button. What this button do is that capture using javacript the page as it is and send you the report, with all the details, and an image of the actually page.
So I have found this library http://html2canvas.hertzen.com/ that make the same think.
And here are some example pages with this feedback.
http://hertzen.com/experiments/jsfeedback/
So I add this feedback option, and I ask from the users to point out the issue, and send the feedback, so for pages I have a very nice image for what is not going well.
The next think is that I log and check all errors, and I fix them soon.

Quickiest way to determine why a site is sluggish?

I just picked up a client who's Wordpress web site takes anywhere between 8 to 22 seconds to START loading. The loading delay also occurs when using the Wordpress backend so I'd like to fix the loading issue first before starting my work (template re-design). What's the quickest yet efficient way to determine why this Wordpress site is taking so long to start loading?
Thanks in advance
P.S. - They currently have a caching plugin installed (WP Super Cache) which I assume the previous web developer installed to help with the loading issue but it only helps with the front-end and not the back-end.
Try to run some test like YSlow and Google Page Speed and read their results and suggestions.
Google Speed Online is helping me a lot with analysis of my websites.
http://pagespeed.googlelabs.com/
I use browsermob. They use real browsers to test the site load performance. Shows very nice graphs showing how long each and every request took. Also shows how many requests happen in parallel. As they use real browser, you can see how long it will take to load on a real browser. Then you can choose from which location you want to test. You can choose a UK location to test how fast your page loads from UK.
By the way, I am in no way related to browsermob. I just happen to be a satisfied user of this.
And it is free.
Your server is probably loading far too many modules and is thrashing the disks as it's run out of memory.
You need to both reduce how much memory each PHP instance consumes and limit how many PHP instances can run simultanouesly to ensure you don't use virtual memory for your PHP instances.
I've written a detailed answer to a very similar problem here on Stack Overflow:
How can I figure out why my Wordpress pages load so slowly?
Well, i have came across a similar situation, such things happen when your website is hosted on a GridHosting server, which means it changes according to the server load, but sometimes the things are just opposite the scenario, the best way to check why it is slow is to first ping the website at random interval , so in this way you will know if the distance is the cause or the packet dropping is the issue, secondly, you need to make sure your server's configurations is good, i.e; request your host about a RAW log of your website, in this way you can know what is it taking long for your server to response, and the least best method is to check and make sure that your DNS resolves in a good time, and try to use some free CDN services like CloudFlare.
Hope this helps.

slow of first page, running on windows/IIS

I'm more into the LAMP stack, but I've been asked to work on a site that is running Windows and IIS 2008. I'm a beginner with IIS, so please be patient with me on this, and please ask me to provide more information if that is needed to determine.
I read the answer here (Slow first page load on asp.net site), but it seems like if I go to the site with one browser it takes long to load the first page, then fast on all other pages, then if I open up another browser, it's the same thing, so it's not something that is saved on the server, but per session?
Is there a way to have the application running at all times?
Right now it is taking 12 to 15 seconds for the first page to load.
I have access to the WebControlCenter and FTP.
I would look in the Global.asax page and see if there is anything going on when a session is started. There usually is a method in there called Session_Start that is called whenever a session is started. Also, it might have to do with the site being configured in debug mode. You can change the web.config setting to false, which has a big impact on performance.
I'm familiar with the phenomenon described in the question you've linked to, but your what you're describing does seem a bit odd.
firstly- try Jeff's suggestion and see if indeed there's something at the beginning of the session which slows it down.
If not- try answering this-
1. is the first page always slow or only on first access to it?
2. what happens if you open another tab in the browser (not a different browser)?
3. it's possibel that the page contains some heavy resources (like images, script files etc.) which are only downloaded on the first access to the page. try tracing your http responses you get and see what their sizes are.
4. try to enable trace on your web page to see the events which are taking the longest time (on aspx you need to add 'Page Trace="true"' to the page declaration)
hope one of these helps...
Have you tried a http debugger here? Lots of things could be going on here, but the fact that you get different behavior by using different browsers indicates it is probably some particular resource that is overweight.

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