Saving an asp.net mvc IIS6 site is always ready to accept requests

Question

I have an asp.net mvc intranet site that is deployed in IIS6. The site is rarely used, so the application tends to shut down. When the user clicks on the page for the first time, 5-10 seconds are passed until the page appears (the application pool is started and the site is compiled). The situation is repeated for the next page and so on. AFAIK IIS7 has the ability to disable application pool shutdown, but IIS6 lacks it.

Currently, I have a special utility that periodically checks the site (10 pages) to determine if the pages are accessible, and always maintains the site this way.

Is this normal, or maybe I missed something in the IIS6 configuration? Do you use such pinger apps in production to notify support / admins if the site is unavailable?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

You can turn off application pool shutdown on IIS 6.