Hosting irCatalog on IIS vs Windows Services

Background

During setup and installation of the irServer components, irCatalog, and irServer Rule Execution Service, the installer can choose to host the component services on IIS or as a Windows Service.

Managed Windows Services

This option registers the WCF service as a managed Windows Service. Key benefits and limitations of managed windows services are as follows:

• Lifetime of the service process is controlled by the operating system and is not message activated.
• Most versions of Windows support managed Windows Services

IIS

IIS is recommended as the preferred approach for hosting InRule in service applications. Key benefits and IIS are noted below:

• Process recycling and health monitoring
• Message-based activation
• Built-in request throttling
• Built-in thread pooling and request queuing

As detailed in the InRule Installation Help File, InRule generally recommends IIS service types for irCatalog and irServer Rule Execution Service because of the built-in failover, queuing, administration, deployment, and scalability capabilities, as well as additional configuration options.