IIS, dotNet, and App pool recycling

While I agree that an iControl way of disabling new connections to a pool member before planned maintenance is useful, I'm curious why app pool recycles in particular are causing a problem for your team.

 

 

A couple of items that might be worth looking into:

 

- Why is the app pool being recycled so frequently that people notice? I would make sure the default recycle interval of 1740 minutes is disabled in favor of recycling at a specific time or not at all. An app pool that contains stable production apps may not need to be recycled between planned maintenance.

 

- Application pools use overlapping recycles by default so the app is typically not down during the recycle. However, in-process session state will be lost. If loss of session state is the problem and your team owns the apps, your team may consider using one of the other methods available to store session state: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178586.aspx

 

 

If loss of session state is in fact the problem, eliminating it by avoiding in-process sessions may also help to minimize the impact of app releases, unplanned app pool recycles (due to memory exhaustion, for example) and other planned maintenance. Good luck!