Search

16 October, 2017

ASP.Net 4.5 Garbage Collection Improvement


Fundamentals of Garbage Collection

In the common language runtime (CLR), the garbage collector serves as an automatic memory manager. It provides the following benefits:+
  • Enables you to develop your application without having to free memory.
  • Allocates objects on the managed heap efficiently.
  • Reclaims objects that are no longer being used, clears their memory, and keeps the memory available for future allocations. Managed objects automatically get clean content to start with, so their constructors do not have to initialize every data field.
  • Provides memory safety by making sure that an object cannot use the content of another object.

The .NET Framework's garbage collector manages the allocation and release of memory for your application. The garbage collector's optimizing engine determines the best time to perform a collection, based upon the allocations being made. When the garbage collector performs a collection, it checks for objects in the managed heap that are no longer being used by the application and performs the necessary operations to reclaim their memory."

“Garbage collector is one real heavy task in a .NET application. And it becomes heavier when it is an ASP.NET application. ASP.NET applications run on the server and a lot of clients send requests to the server thus creating loads of objects, making the GC really work hard for cleaning up unwanted objects.”
“To overcome the above problem, server GC was introduced. In server GC there is one more thread created which runs in the background. This thread works in the background and keeps cleaning…objects thus minimizing the load on the main GC thread. Due to double GC threads running, the main application threads are less suspended, thus increasing application throughput. To enable server GC, we need to use the gcServer XML tag and enable it to true.”
<configuration>
   <runtime>
      <gcServer enabled="true"/>
   </runtime>
</configuration>
This is not done by default. The MSDN information page says “There are only two garbage collection options, workstation or server. For single-processor computers, the default workstation garbage collection should be the fastest option. Either workstation or server can be used for two-processor computers. Server garbage collection should be the fastest option for more than two processors. Use the GCSettingsIsServerGC property to determine if server garbage collection is enabled.”
“In the .NET Framework 4 and earlier versions, concurrent garbage collection is not available when server garbage collection is enabled. Starting with the .NET Framework 4.5, server garbage collection is concurrent. To use non-concurrent server garbage collection, set the <gcServer> element to true and the <gcConcurrent> element to false. “
So if you’re using ASP.Net 4.5 and have a multi-core server, you should try turning on the Server Garbage Collection and do some profiling to see if it improves the performance of your site.
on