Application Initialization UI for IIS 7.5

IIS Application Initialization for IIS 7.5 enables website administrators to improve the responsiveness of their Web sites by loading the Web applications before the first request arrives. By proactively loading and initializing all the dependencies such as database connections, compilation of ASP.NET code, and loading of modules, IT Professionals can ensure their Web sites are responsive at all times even if their Web sites use a custom request pipeline or if the Application Pool is recycled. While an application is being initialized, IIS can also be configured to return an alternate response such as static content as a placeholder or “splash page” until an application has completed its initialization tasks.

 

> Improved customer experience while the Application is warming up

> Decrease the response time for first requests by pre-loading worker processes

> Increase reliability by pre-loading worker processes when Overlapped Recycling occurs

There is no UI available for application initialization release and we have to configure it using appcmd commands. To simplify its usage and to understand its features, I have written a UI module for it.

There are two level of settings that need to be done configure Application Initialization:

1. Application pool level

2. Website level

Installing the module: 

I have attached the installer for 64 bit and could be used for Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 x64.

Prerequisite: Before installing Application initialization UI module from the download in this blog, please install Application Initialization

http://www.iis.net/download/ApplicationInitialization

P.S. I have also attached a sample splash page that could be used while application is initializing.

References:

Application Initialization for IIS 7.5

http://www.iis.net/download/ApplicationInitialization

IIS 8.0 Application Initialization

http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/1089/iis-80-application-initialization/

Blogs that helped me write this module:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tess/archive/2008/08/28/creating-a-ui-module-for-iis7-to-watch-current-requests.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/puneetgupta/archive/2009/08/03/where-is-the-client-certificates-ui-in-iis-7-0.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/carlosag/archive/2008/11/10/CreatingSetupProjectForIISusingVisualStudio2008.aspx

ApplicationInitializationInstaller_x64.zip