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I understand how and why "Shared" Azure Website instances get recycled, especially if idle to provide more capacity for the servers, all managed by the ARR server. So I can understand why, if idle, one's instance may go cold, ie first thing in the morning.

However......

I am using a "Standard" Website instance for production, and a "Basic" instance for testing. I assumed that these instances stayed live and "hot" 24/7. However due to encountering some suspicious "warmup" symptoms, I believe my so called "Standard" or "Basic" instance may be recycling.

I would appreciate some light on this. It may be I have misunderstood something, especially whether "Standard" or "Basic" instances stay up 24/7.

Of course a pragmatic tip for this is to have an auto ping service like pingdom and uptimerobot which we do use on production.

Finally I am currently using a single instance of each, so it could be that a patch has happened. But some clarity would help.

SamJolly
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1 Answers1

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The idle tear down feature is still there for all tiers. This allows even the Basic and Standard tiers (the ones where you basically own the VM) to have a ton of sites running on them. Check the "Always On" setting on the Configure tab of the website. I believe this is set to Off by default. If you turn that on it should keep the sites live. This is also something you want to set when you have a continuous web job within a site.

It is possible that a host or Guest OS update would cause the basic and standard tiers to also get restarted.


The "Always on" setting in the azure website configuration menu

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Martin
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MikeWo
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  • Thanks for this. I am very familiar with the "always on" feature, but not fully on how it works. It seems to me to be nothing more that another "autoping" service. Therefore I find the external ones such as Pingdom and UptimeRobot more transparent, and with more features such as notification of down time. Also I have just the one application on each instance. There is an interesting issue about charging. As I understood it if the instance is on, then one is being charged for it, for the whole time. So logically one could be paying for it when it has been torn down which is an uneasy thought. – SamJolly Aug 15 '14 at 16:41
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    @SamJolly Always On is more than just autoping, it turns off the setting that makes the site teardown from happening in the first place. When you have a Basic or Standard site you have an entire VM dedicated for your use. All the sites that you create in that webspace are run on that same machine at no additional cost to you. You're paying for the VM at this point, not the sites. You could potentially have hundreds of sites on your standard VM and still pay the same amount as you do for one site. In order to scale to that large number Azure tears down your sites unless you specify Always ON – Zain Rizvi Aug 15 '14 at 17:24
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    @SamJolly Basically, with Basic and Standard sites you're paying for the VM which is reserved exclusively for your use. – Zain Rizvi Aug 15 '14 at 17:25
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    @ZainRizvi is correct. Once you get to Basic or Standard you're paying for the VM. – MikeWo Aug 15 '14 at 18:24
  • Zain, this is really helpful. Sorry I was getting confused. The VM stays up, but the site tears down, unless always on is turned on. In my case I need to do this. Thank you for clarifying. – SamJolly Aug 15 '14 at 22:39
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    One more comment about difference between Always On and auto-ping is that when you have multiple instances a ping will ping one of them but Always On will make sure all of them are "hot". – Amit Apple Aug 15 '14 at 23:39
  • @AmitApple, Excellent comment, and one I had missed since I am not using multiple instances at present. – SamJolly Aug 19 '14 at 10:22