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Is there some mechanism in WCF that can be used to "pre-start / warm-up" WCF services that are hosted in IIS ? - something like the warm-up scripts for SharePoint sites

I have the situation where servers are re-booted over night and next day there is a long delay while the WCF services spin-up. I can't change the time-out in various applications that use the services, so the first users are reporting errors in the morning when they go to use their applications

This is on Windows 2003 Server and IIS 6.0, so the IIS Application Pool Warm-Up Module, http://www.iis.net/download/applicationwarmup, as that's for IIS 7.5

NOTE: the module seems to have been temporarily withdrawn, see details on ... IIS Forum

SteveC
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  • The question at ... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2063461/iis-web-applications-warmup ... seems to be only referring to SharePoint and web applications, rather than WCF services – SteveC Oct 05 '10 at 11:50

3 Answers3

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I know you will don't like the answer and I think I repeat myself because it is not the first time I'm posting it. The way to warm-up anything in IIS prior to version 7.5 is using scheduled console application to ping your web site / services and warm them up. It is ugly solution but it works, it is easy and I saw it on every project which had to deal with this requirement.

SteveC
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Ladislav Mrnka
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  • Ah well, until they upgrade to IIS 7.5 ... thanks for the help, scheduled task installed and working – SteveC Oct 06 '10 at 10:56
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WCF services should be instantly ready when they start. Just make sure the services are set to automatically start when the server boots.

jimplode
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  • Apologies, didn't make it clear ... these are WCF services hosted in IIS, not in Window services. – SteveC Oct 05 '10 at 11:52
  • I have never hosted in IIS, always use windows services for them. Sounds odd that they need to warm up?! Could you write a scheduled event to hit it to warm it up on system restart? – jimplode Oct 05 '10 at 12:06
  • Sort of thinking that way ... seems hacky, but then I suppose that's what the IIS 7.5 module is for ... just wish we had 7.5 – SteveC Oct 05 '10 at 15:46
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You can use Windows Server AppFabric, it has Auto Stat feature to keep the service always on. But you need to be on IIS 7.5 to install App Fabric.

Sathish Naga
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  • Thanks for the pointer ... seems to be the only auto-start option now for IIS 7.5, as the IIS module has been temporarily withdrawn, see [IIS Forum](http://forums.iis.net/t/1176740.aspx) – SteveC Jul 16 '11 at 09:35