hi Peter,
Great questions on best practices with your server side components.
IIS Resets – Any active users will have their session disconnected. This will stop and start all IIS processes as well as all Application Pools. Because this restarts everything IIS related, this level of restarting is often unnecessary.
Application Pool Recycle - Any active users will have their session disconnected. This will stop and start a specific Application Pool (w3wp.exe). This is generally preferred as the impact to active users can be better managed.
An IIS Reset or Application Pool Recycle can be scheduled to occur during your nightly or weekly maintenance window.
The Application Server Cache Reset is not the same as the two procedures discussed above. The Cache Reset is for emergency configuration modifications that need to impact production during the business day. This change will impact both interactive users as well as API level processes.
The reason to consider a Cache Reset as an emergency procedure is because active users are in progress on work tasks. Depending on the modification to configuration, performing a Cache Reset has the potential to cause the data for logged in users to be in an inconsistent state. This is a result of cached data Application Server references to tasks in progress. This inconsistency can cause different users to see different information or prevent proper Workflow execution.
To prevent these types of situations, it is best a practice to update/modify process configuration during downtime, unless there is an urgent need during the business day.
I hope this information helps.
thanks,
Doug
