IIS Website - Maintenance mode (VSTS task)

VSTS/TFS Task for putting an IIS website in maintenance mode and back online again.

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Details

If you put an app_offline.htm file in the root of your web application, IIS will shut down the application and only serve this webpage as an result with a HTTP 503 code. After you rename/delete the file the site will be back online.

This can be usefull when you deploy websites without high availability environments and still the visitors a nice message instead of errors. In the case you do have a high availability environment with a load balancer, you can configure the load balancer in such a way that it will switch when it notices a 503 code.

How it works

Add a html file with the maintenance message to your artificat for the website and give it the same filename as specified under Online filename. When this task is executed in offline mode it will find that particular file and change it to the Offline filename which will take the site offline. In online mode it will do the exact opposite.

Available options

• Computer name: Leave empty if you want to perform this operation on the local computer. When you want to use Remote Powershell you can fill in the desired remote computer.
• Change to: State to put the website in. Either offline or online.
• Site root directory: The directory where the website is running.
• Offline filename: The filename to use to take the site offline.
• Online filename: The filename to use to take the site online.
• Fail deployment on error: Fail the whole deployment if this operation cannot succeed.
• Seconds delay before: Amount of seconds to wait before changing the state of the website.
• Seconds delay after: Amount of seconds to wait after changing the state of the website.