file system problems

[Jack Fox]

We are encountering a couple of problems with our ASP.NET / IIS 6.0
applications:

In each of 3 production environments we maintain a Windows Server 2003
machine running NTFS as a file server. The file server typically has 10s of
thousands of files on it. We've nver bothered to count, but I can imagine
that some environments excede 100,000 files.

Problem #1) We use the HttpContext Cache with a dependency on some given
file on the file server. Eventually the servers in our web farm will stop
recognizing that a dependency file has changed (we delete the file, and
eventually create a new file to the same path) and hold onto the given Cache
object, despite the dependecy file having changed. We have tried
stopping/starting IIS, but it seems the web server itself has to be rebooted,
and then caching works correctly until next time. We are aware of a possibly
related knowledge base article describing an error condition where cache
monitoring fails to start, but in this case we do not think we are throwing
any errors.

Problem #2) Eventually among the many thousands of files on our file server,
one will get into a state where the OS thinks it is locked by an application.
We cannot delete the file, and investigation reveals no application locking
the file. We have researched this problem and the only solution seems to be
to reboot the file server. This is a terrible solution, because our whole
production set-up depends on the file server running, and we need to reuse
the path the locked file is occupying.

[Winista]

1. You said web farm.... Does all web servers have simialr folder/file
strcuture?
2. What did you use to investigate if file is locked by some application?
Does your web application opens these files?

What version of .Net?
"Jack Fox" <Jack Fo*@discussions.microsoft.comwrote in message
news:0E**********************************@microsof t.com...

We are encountering a couple of problems with our ASP.NET / IIS 6.0
applications:

In each of 3 production environments we maintain a Windows Server 2003
machine running NTFS as a file server. The file server typically has 10s
of
thousands of files on it. We've nver bothered to count, but I can imagine
that some environments excede 100,000 files.

Problem #1) We use the HttpContext Cache with a dependency on some given
file on the file server. Eventually the servers in our web farm will stop
recognizing that a dependency file has changed (we delete the file, and
eventually create a new file to the same path) and hold onto the given
Cache
object, despite the dependecy file having changed. We have tried
stopping/starting IIS, but it seems the web server itself has to be
rebooted,
and then caching works correctly until next time. We are aware of a
possibly
related knowledge base article describing an error condition where cache
monitoring fails to start, but in this case we do not think we are
throwing
any errors.

Problem #2) Eventually among the many thousands of files on our file
server,
one will get into a state where the OS thinks it is locked by an
application.
We cannot delete the file, and investigation reveals no application
locking
the file. We have researched this problem and the only solution seems to
be
to reboot the file server. This is a terrible solution, because our whole
production set-up depends on the file server running, and we need to reuse
the path the locked file is occupying.

[Jack Fox]

1) All servers on the farm use the same folder structure. In this case the
folder structure is determined by registry entries on each web server, not
virtual IIS folders. In any case if there were a discrpency in structure
between the web servers it would cause much bigger problems. Our problem is
very rare only only occurs once or twice among many thousands of files over
the course of months.

2) Under Computer Management/Shared Folders/Open Files the problem files are
not listed as open. (But we can watch other files open and close in their
normal operations.) Also one of our developers (who is now on vacation) using
some 3rd party tool also could not detect an owner of the lock on the problem
files.

"Winista" wrote:

1. You said web farm.... Does all web servers have simialr folder/file
strcuture?
2. What did you use to investigate if file is locked by some application?
Does your web application opens these files?

What version of .Net?
"Jack Fox" <Jack Fo*@discussions.microsoft.comwrote in message
news:0E**********************************@microsof t.com...

We are encountering a couple of problems with our ASP.NET / IIS 6.0
applications:

In each of 3 production environments we maintain a Windows Server 2003
machine running NTFS as a file server. The file server typically has 10s
of
thousands of files on it. We've nver bothered to count, but I can imagine
that some environments excede 100,000 files.

Problem #1) We use the HttpContext Cache with a dependency on some given
file on the file server. Eventually the servers in our web farm will stop
recognizing that a dependency file has changed (we delete the file, and
eventually create a new file to the same path) and hold onto the given
Cache
object, despite the dependecy file having changed. We have tried
stopping/starting IIS, but it seems the web server itself has to be
rebooted,
and then caching works correctly until next time. We are aware of a
possibly
related knowledge base article describing an error condition where cache
monitoring fails to start, but in this case we do not think we are
throwing
any errors.

Problem #2) Eventually among the many thousands of files on our file
server,
one will get into a state where the OS thinks it is locked by an
application.
We cannot delete the file, and investigation reveals no application
locking
the file. We have researched this problem and the only solution seems to
be
to reboot the file server. This is a terrible solution, because our whole
production set-up depends on the file server running, and we need to reuse
the path the locked file is occupying.