Off Topic: Advice on designing reliable applications

[derrick.signup]

Hello all;

I apologize for being slightly off topic, but I have great respect for
the knowledge in this group.

I am about to begin developing a .NET application where reliability
(i.e., uptime/availability) is important. It is going to be a
distributed Windows app, which will be controlling some hardware
devices. A nice parallel would be the "Smart Home", where a computer
controls various items within a house - lighting, TV, heat, stereo,
whatever. Obviously in this scenario, you want that controlling
computer app to be always available.

Of course it is important to define what "reliable" actually means in
the application's context, and to properly test the system. But I was
wondering if anyone here has built system monitoring into your
applications to help? For example, have the application keep track of
things like memory usage and have it take some sort of action if usage
starts to get out of hand. The goal would be that the application
would monitor it's own health, and have some prescribed remedies for
specific conditions.

I came across this article, which inticed me to post this message:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...nt7/html/vxconBestPracticesForReliability.asp

If anyone has any advice, or good resources on this topic (web, book,
whatever), I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for humoring me with my off topic post

Derrick

 

[Robbe Morris [C# MVP]]

Assuming the monitor has to reside on the same pc, I'd
suggest writing a service and having it installed after
your app is installed.

In the background, the service could all sorts of
things in support of the application even if it isn't
running at all.