Controlling Applications
To manage an application and the system that the application is hosted on, you need an easy way to stop and start an application. This is especially true when you need to service an application (either an on-demand application or an always-on application) by updating the system. The topics in this section describe how to stop or start an application in the IIS Manager extensions for AppFabric or through Windows PowerShell cmdlets for AppFabric.
Stopping and starting an application can be a challenge because of auto-start functionality, which makes the process of stopping an application completely and subsequently resuming it more complicated. In order to ensure that you can resume an application to its original state, the list of enabled protocols and the state of auto-start (enabled or disabled) both need to be saved when the application is disabled. AppFabric saves the list of enabled protocols in the previouslyEnabledProtocols attribute in the applicationHost.config file. The ServiceAutoStartEnabled attribute in applicationHost.config indicates the state of auto-start.
Whether stopping or starting an application succeeds is affected by the state of the message flow, i.e., protocols are enabled, disabled, or missing. The following table indicates whether the stop application and start application actions can be run (enabled) or not run (disabled) depending upon the status of the application protocols and the value of ServiceAutoStartEnabled.
| Application Protocols Status | ServiceAutoStartEnabled | Start Application | Stop Application |
|---|---|---|---|
Disabled or N/A |
False or Null |
Enabled |
Disabled |
N/A |
True |
Disabled |
Enabled |
Disabled |
True |
Enabled |
Enabled |
Enabled |
False or Null & mode==”” |
Disabled |
Enabled |
Enabled |
False or Null & mode!==”” |
Enabled |
Enabled |
Enabled or N/A |
True |
Disabled |
Enabled |
The ServiceAutoStartMode attribute determines the state of auto-start after stopping an application. If serviceAutoStartMode is set to “All” or “Custom”, AppFabric will enable the application auto-start upon starting an application; otherwise, it will keep it disabled.