Like any live software, you should count on a bit of downtime and boot
people off the applications. For Internet sites, you are best to have at
least two servers in a cluster to update each separately.
The downtime with any form of deployment (drag and drop, VS.NET pushed,
install project) is normally very small (with perhaps the exception of
install project), so the downtime issue is not great. Realize, however, that
redeploy, no matter how small, "reboots" the app, so any users in the middle
of something are trashed. To avoid this, you should plan for downtime (or
use a clustered approach and bring down one, update, then the other).
I have used all methods of deploying and prefer a drag and drop or VS.NET
push deploy. NOTE, however, that this requires a bit of discipline, as you
have to change settings from your debug environment. I suggest making a
preflight checklist and following it, no matter how dull it seems. The
likelihood of forgetting to change a database string (dev to production) or
change config settings (etc) are much lower if you plan the deploy. A simple
checklist works in most cases, but you should also have complete
documentation for others.
--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA
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Think Outside the Box!
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