MCMS Performance - Best Practices

Hardware	To avoid competition for resources among applications, it is important that you keep MCMS on dedicated servers. Instances of SQL Server should be installed on their own computers as well. This will avoid the applications and services competing for CPU and memory. Memory Sufficient memory to store the working set of pages in output or fragment cache. Speed up the page assembly - ensure that there is sufficient memory available for the node cache. Processor capacity Ensure that enough CPU capacity available to efficiently assemble pages using data from node cache, disk cache, and the MSQL database. Network Ensure that the Web server is placed on the same switch as the database servers to minimize network latency.
Caching	ASP.NET Output Cache Output caching increases performance so dramatically, all MCMS sites using ASP.NET should make use of this cache where appropriate. This is managed by .NET framework. Fragment Cache This is similar to Output cache, but managed by MCMS. Fragment caching is used only with "guest" content. Fragment caching user-specific content requires a great deal of care to ensure that sensitive information is not accidentally revealed. This only exists for ASP based templates MCMS Node Cache Node cache plays a central role in page assembly - increasing the amount of memory available to it is an important part of improving MCMS performance. To set the node cache depending on your site check set the node cache size based on site size. Disk Cache You should increase the size of the disk cache so that it can contain most, if not all, of your MCMS managed resources. To know more about Caching read Enhancing Performance with Caching.
Navigation	Render only what is necessary. Make the site-level navigation as generic as possible. Use output caching when ever possible.
Authentication	The sites require authentication perform 15% (for basic templates it's around 30%) slower than those require no authentication - remove the authorization module if no authentication is required - this will increase the performance of the site be 10%.
Resource Management	Make resources as minimum as possible to increase the performance of the site. Resources such as images, sound clips, and video clips can have a large impact on your Web site's performance. As a general rule, you should avoid using large resources. Compress resources whenever possible. For example, for pictures, use .jpg images instead of .bmp images. Also, unmanaged resources are not part of MCMS, you can achieve performance improvements by using them.
Content Updates	The affected nodes will be invalidated. If you are using the AddValidationCallbackAllCmsContent method then it will flush the output caching. So it's better to make batch content updates as much as possible.
Background Processing	Database performance will decline during background processing. Therefore, as a general rule you should schedule background processing for non-peak times to reduce the chance that it will affect your site performance.
Managing IIS	On a read-only site, remove HTML packager ISAPI filter.
SQL Server	For optimal performance, the databases should be separated from their transaction logs on different physical drives to prevent resource conflicts. For more information about SQL Server performance tuning, go to Optimizing Database Performance.
Design time Performance	MCMS can handle a reasonably large number of authors (25 to 100), each updating a small number of postings (around 10) per day. However, the performance of MCMS will suffer under a high load of concurrent update operations where the interval between updates is small. MCMS performance will suffer when a live source is coupled with authored content updates.
Placeholders	Limit the number of placeholders on a template to fewer than 100. For best performance, consider limiting the number of placeholders to 30. Limit the line of content to less than 1000. It is better to have less than 100 to have high performance.
Container Hierarchy	Limit the number of containers under the root node. (For example, channels should not have more than 10 to 15 immediate child containers). This won't affect the MCMS performance significantly. But, it will affect the performance of non-MCMS content on the same server. Limit the items in a container to fewer than 300. You can do this by distributing items over multiple containers, to ensure that the number of items in each container does not exceed 300.
Custom Property Searches	Design such that, the total number of posting searched using custom property is less than 5000. It is better to have lesser that 500.
Site Partitioning	Very large MCMS sites that contain many postings (which has more than 20,000 postings) should consider whether it is possible to partition the site into a series of smaller sites to get optimum performance.

This is a summary from Performance Planning and Deployment with Content Management Server 2002.

Also Stefan has posted two less known performance issues caused by in-proper use of publishing API in his article.

MCMS Manager 3.1

All the tools are separated from MCMS Manager. This version includes -

1. Tools Add in Manager.
2. Reports exporter.
3. MCMS Health Checker.

Also, when minimized - it will stay in System tray - no need to close and open. Download MCMS Manager (and other tools) from here.

Rights Check via Publishing API

CmsContext

• The rights check given below on CmsContext are side-wide checks.
• This doesn't depend on PublishingMode.

Property	User roles - who have rights on site
UserCanApprove	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, or Editor
UserCanAuthor	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor, or Author
UserCanEditResources	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Resource Manager
UserCanEditTemplates	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer
UserCanModifySite	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Resource Manager, Moderator, Editor, or Author

Channel

• The checks given below are done on the appropriate channels.
• Channels can be only modified in Update mode.

Property	Additional Checks	User roles - who have rights on channel
CanCreateChannels	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanCreatePostings	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor, or Author
CanDelete	Channel must be empty The root channel cannot be deleted by anyone	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanSetProperties	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer

Posting

• The checks given below are done on those postings.
• Postings can be only modified in Update mode.

Property	Rights on Channel	PostingState	User roles - who have rights on posting
CanMove	-	Approved, EditorDeclined, Expired, ModeratorDeclined, New, None, Published, Saved, WaitingForEditorApproval, WaitingForModeratorApproval	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor or Author if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanSubmit	-	New , Saved , Editor Declined , or Moderator Declined	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Editor or Author if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanDelete	-	Approved, EditorDeclined, Expired, ModeratorDeclined, New, None, Published, Saved, WaitingForEditorApproval, WaitingForModeratorApproval	Administrator, Channel manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor, or Author if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanSetProperties	-	Approved, EditorDeclined, Expired, ModeratorDeclined, New, None, Published, Saved, WaitingForEditorApproval, WaitingForModeratorApproval	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor, or Author if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanApprove	Only Editor Rights	New, Saved, EditorDeclined or WaitingForEditorApproval	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Editor
CanApprove	Editor and Moderator Rights	ModeratorDeclined or WaitingForModeratorApproval	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Moderator
CanApprove	Only Moderator Rights	New, Saved	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Moderator
CanApprove	No Moderator or Editor Rights	New, Saved, EditorDeclined, WaitingForEditorApproval, WaitingForModeratorApproval or ModeratorDeclined	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer

TemplateGallery

• The checks given below are done on the appropriate template galleries.
• Template Galleries can be only modified in Update mode.

Property	Additional Checks	User roles - who have rights on templategallery
CanCreateTemplateGalleries	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanCreateTemplates	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanDelete	TemplateGallery must be empty The root TemplateGallery cannot be deleted by anyone	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanMove	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanSetProperties	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer

Template

• The checks given below are done on those templates.
• Templates can be only modified in Update mode.

Property	TemplateState	User roles - who have rights on template
CanMove	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanSubmit	New, NewShared, Saved or SavedShared	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanDelete	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer if it is not OwnedBy another user
CanUseForAuthoring	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor, or Author
CanSetProperties	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer if it is not OwnedBy another user

ResourceGallery

• The checks given below are done on the appropriate resource galleries.
• Resource Galleries can be only modified in Update mode.

Property	Additional Checks	User roles - who have rights on resourcegallery
CanCreateResources	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Resource Manager
CanDelete	ResourceGallery must be empty The root ResourceGallery cannot be deleted by anyone	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer
CanSetProperties	-	Administrator, Channel Manager, or Template Designer

Resource

• The checks given below are done on those resources.
• Resources can be only modified in Update mode.

Property	User roles - who have rights on resource
CanSetContent	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Resource Manager
CanDelete	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Resource Manager
CanUseForAuthoring	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, Moderator, Editor, or Author
CanSetProperties	Administrator, Channel Manager, Template Designer, or Resource Manager

Connected Posting State Change by Approval and Submission

Connected postings are related with underlying 'Posting' objects and 'Page' objects. As I've stated in my previous post all the connected posting will have the same page objects. FollowGuids will be used to refer page objects with postings (to understand more check Posting - Posting - Channel Relationship).

When creating a new connected posting, a new posting will be created with same page objects - which other connected postings are using. All the connected postings, they will have their own posting objects, but will use the same page object. So any modification to page object will move all the connected postings to the appropriate state where if a posting object is modified, it will move only that connected posting to the appropriate state (to know what are bounded with page object and posting object check Posting State Change by Approval).

The state changes of postings can be found in my previous posts,

1. Posting State Change by Approval
2. Posting State Change by Submission

and it will be same for connected postings as well. The only difference is that when a modification - state change is done to one connected posting, if it is a modification on page object - that will get reflected in all the connected postings as it has only one copy of page object whereas if the modification is on posting object then it will only affect that connected posting as all the connected posting has their own posting objects.

PS: Don't get confused with Posting , Posting object and Page object. Posting is used over the API and other two are underlying objects which will makeup the overall posting (Posting = Posting object + Page object).

MCMS Manager 3.0

New version includes tools to reduce the time spend on creation of script files for Export/Import.

1. Incremental Export Script Generator.
2. Incremental Import Script Generator.
3. Cms User Group Backup/Restore Script Generator.

These tools support saving the settings as xml files. So if you require modified version of the script in future, you can just load and modify (using the provided gui) the xml file and generate required script without much difficulty!

Goto MCMS Manager Site.