Professional Microsoft IIS 8

Application Initialization

Application Initialization—available as a separate, downloadable module for previous versions of IIS—is now included with Windows Server 2012. As some web applications may require lengthy initialization sequences, the Application Initialization module allows administrators to prime their application prior to receiving HTTP requests from end users.

The Application Initialization module does not have a GUI interface; instead, all modification must be done directly to configuration files.

The Application Initialization module has two main sets of settings:

• At the applicationHost.config layer, application pools can be configured to start automatically when the IIS World Wide Web publishing service starts.
• At the application layer (web.config), IIS can request a configured page or pages, so as to “initialize” the application. A temporary holding page can be displayed to end users until the application is ready.

To configure an application pool to be started automatically (rather than the default “on demand” setting), add the startMode setting to the application pool's settings in the applicationHost.config file:

<applicationPools>
   <add name="newAppPool" startMode="AlwaysRunning"
      managedRuntimeVersion="v4.0" />
</applicationPools>

Each application pool configured this way will have its hosting w3wp.exe process started when the IIS World Wide Web publishing service is started (e.g., when the machine starts).

To configure the individual application's initialization ...