How to disable the application pool idle time-out in IIS7?

application-pool, asp.net, iis-7

Solution

Yes, setting the idle timeout value to zero will disable idle timeouts.

Oddly this isn't documented in the MS docs but my evidence for this arises from:

IIS Settings Schema

If you have a look at the IIS settings schema in:

`C:\Windows\System32\inetsrv\config\schema\IIS_schema.xml`

The schema definition for `idleTimeout` under

`<sectionSchema name="system.applicationHost/applicationPools">`

it looks like:

<attribute name="idleTimeout" 
       type="timeSpan" 
       defaultValue="00:20:00" 
       validationType="timeSpanRange" 
       validationParameter="0,2592000,60"/>

If you look at the `validationParameter` attribute we see a range of 0 to 2592000 seconds (the `,60` specifies the granularity of the setting, in this case the value must be divisable by 60 [one minute]).

If you see a starting permissible value of `0` then that usually indicates the setting can be disabled.

IIS7 Application Pool Idle Time-out Settings

Brad Kingsley is the founder and CEO of OrcsWeb who are a fairly well known, respected and trusted Microsoft hoster and Gold Partner.

Then there's also the empirical evidence of the fact that it "just works".

Problem

Original source