Recent problems with a client website have required me to re-discover a whole lot of performance tid-bits which i’d either long forgot or just plan never knew.

In trying to stress-test the SQL server forming the backend of the website, we ended up exceeding the web-server’s capabilities and it would die with a not-so-nice error citing “HttpException (0x80004005): Server Too Busy” and a call-stack dump internal to the framework.

I was lucky enough to find an article on the MSDN which explains a work-around for the ASP.NET web-application request queue limit.

<httpRuntime appRequestQueueLimit=”5000″>

Just add this element in your <system.web /> web.config element (and change the value 5000 to whatever you deem appropriate)