Microsoft Internet Information Server Research & Evidence-Based Practice 4

Question 1

Which evidence-based methodology does Microsoft recommend for capacity planning IIS deployments: measuring at what CPU utilization threshold to add servers?

Accepted Answer

70–75%

Answer

Microsoft's IIS capacity planning guidance recommends maintaining average CPU at 70–75% to leave headroom for traffic spikes without degrading response times.

Question 2

A researcher wants to test whether IIS compression is actually reducing payload sizes. Which metric in IIS logs provides direct evidence?

Accepted Answer

cs-bytes and sc-bytes fields compared across compressed vs uncompressed endpoints

Answer

Comparing cs-bytes (bytes sent by client) and sc-bytes (bytes sent by server) before and after enabling compression quantifies the actual savings.

Question 3

Which configuration file is the authoritative source of evidence for site-level IIS settings and should be reviewed during a configuration audit?

Accepted Answer

applicationHost.config

Answer

applicationHost.config (in %windir%\System32\inetsrv\config) is the master IIS configuration file containing all site, application pool, and server-level settings.

Question 4

When researching IIS DDoS resilience, which built-in IIS feature provides evidence-based rate limiting by restricting requests per connection per time period?

Accepted Answer

Dynamic IP Restrictions (DIPR)

Answer

Dynamic IP Restrictions can automatically detect and deny IPs that exceed a configured request rate threshold, providing a built-in DDoS mitigation layer.

Question 5

A researcher needs to reproduce a production IIS configuration in a test lab for evidence-based change testing. Which approach preserves the complete configuration?

Accepted Answer

Copy applicationHost.config and use appcmd export

Answer

Using appcmd to export configurations alongside applicationHost.config captures all server-level settings, sites, app pools, and bindings for accurate reproduction.

Microsoft Internet Information Server Practice Test

Microsoft Internet Information Server Practice Test

Microsoft Internet Information Server Research & Evidence-Based Practice 4