Service Unavailable In IIS 6.0

If you are not aware, IIS 6.0 has a special feature that monitors failures on your web site. If enough errors occur in a certain period of time, your app pool is shut down. The default is 5 errors in 5 minutes.

I have not seen a whole lot of errors that have registered in this category, i.e. enough of an issue for the app pool to shut itself down. Our dev box gets beaten up pretty well with our apps in progress, and today was the first time I noticed the app pool being down.

This is an important thing to know if you notice a "Service Unavailable" error when your page is being served up. It is also a good thing to be aware of, since it is probably the setting on your production and test boxes, if it has not been modified by your admins.

You can adjust this setting or turn it off in IIS.

A special thanks to Elliot Swan for making my job easier today. I just discovered his tool, Postable. Thanks, Elliot!