Always run application within ASP.NET and external web hosting

Question

I'm creating a ASP.NET .NET 4.0 website and part of this site requires that there is an "always running" application. Normally I would create a Windows Service for this, but the site will be hosted within a shared hosting environment, and unless I get a virtual server, then this isn't a possibility.

My first thought was to have a thread running in the background that would do this and it would be created on Application_Start and destroyed on Application_End. I've looked around and this seems like it could be an option, but I would of course have to hit the site in order to cause the Application_Start to be called and if the associated AppPool is recylced, then this process would have to be repeated (so I believe?!?).

Within a normal ASP.NET website does these seem possible?

This has been asked here a lot, though I am struggling to find the canonically question/answer at the moment. — andynormancx, Jul 24 '11 at 19:16
This was the question I was thinking of I think http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1395358/ — andynormancx, Jul 24 '11 at 19:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '12 at 20:16

In the end I had a seperate thread that sits and waits for a signal to be set. Once set it then does it's work. To make sure the thread is always active I make a HTTP request for a "dummy" page to ensure that, if the AppPool was recycled, then the Application_Start event is triggered and the thread restarted.

Boris Treukhov · Answer 2 · 2011-07-24T19:04:34.917

It depends on what mean by 'always running application':

If it's a realtime service, it still makes sense to run it as separate process, even if it may have a web front-end. It's so because ASP .NET server was designed by Microsoft for specific tasks(to run web apps, render pages etc.) in many aspects like memory usage or multithreading. And I'd prefer to use at least a VDS in such case.

Another case is when it's is a periodically(say every hour) alarmed application which does some uncomplicated work - perhaps your shared hoster has some mechanisms to trigger a specific page to do some work(as my hoster does). For example, I have an ASP .NET page that monitors the tour date list of my favourite band, and sends email notification when they are going to play a gig in my town - it's triggered by hoster every 4 hours.

Always run application within ASP.NET and external web hosting

2 Answers2