.NET deployment question

[Guest]

We have a set of online servers hosting a .net app, whenever we modified the
code , right before we put the new dll in prod, we have to take the server
offline to ensure the dll is overwritable and no online transaction

My concern is we have over 100 hundred such servers to expose to the web 24
by 7. It's a nightmare and very costly to do this each individual time. Is
there a easy way to handle this ?

Appreciate any inspiriting thought.

 

[Erik Funkenbusch]

We have a set of online servers hosting a .net app, whenever we modified the
code , right before we put the new dll in prod, we have to take the server
offline to ensure the dll is overwritable and no online transaction

My concern is we have over 100 hundred such servers to expose to the web 24
by 7. It's a nightmare and very costly to do this each individual time. Is
there a easy way to handle this ?

Appreciate any inspiriting thought.

One approach i've used is to create two different "sites", an a and b site
(or application if you're using virtual directory applications). At any
given time, one site will be the "active" site and when you want to upgrade
the application, you upload it to the alternate. Once everything is
uploaded, you switch the alternate to be the "active" site.

Now, how you switch sites might be a little problematic. If you don't have
existing sessions you need to keep valid, then just stop one site and start
the other. If you need to keep sessions alive, then you're going to have
to redirect users from one site to the other somehow and wait (30 minutes
or so) to take down the first site.

This can all be automated with some wshell scripts.