Is there a way to "auto-deploy" ASP.NET applications after IIS is restarted?

Question

I have an ASP.NET application that uses the Fluorine FX remoting library. When the web application initializes, it kicks off a socket server on a separate port for handling RTMP connections.

The problem we're having is that when IIS is restarted, the RTMP service won't start running until the first HTTP request is made against one of the .aspx files in the application.

I've been reading about the ASP.NET lifecycle and how it ties into IIS referencing this article here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178473.aspx

It seems like the lifecycle is all predicated on the assumption that it's initialized by the first HTTP request...

Does anyone know if there's some kind of hook I get for when IIS restarts so I can force an initialization of Fluorine and its RTMP server?

Answer 1

I believe all of your statements are correct. The functionality you're looking for is best done in a windows service.

Windows 2008's Windows Process Activation Service (WAS) supports non-HTTP scenarios such as plain TCP, named pipes, or MSMQ, but the key term is 'activation' - there's always a trigger.