How to deploy an ASP.NET Application with zero downtime

Question

To deploy a new version of our website we do the following:

1. Zip up the new code, and upload it to the server.
2. On the live server, delete all the live

Answer 1

This is how I do it:

Absolute minimum system requirements:
1 server with

• 1 load balancer/reverse proxy (e.g. nginx) running on port 80
• 2 ASP.NET-Core/mono reverse-proxy/fastcgi chroot-jails or docker-containers listening on 2 different TCP ports
  (or even just two reverse-proxy applications on 2 different TCP ports without any sandbox)

Workflow:

start transaction myupdate

try
    Web-Service: Tell all applications on all web-servers to go into primary read-only mode 
    Application switch to primary read-only mode, and responds 
    Web sockets begin notifying all clients 
    Wait for all applications to respond

    wait (custom short interval)

    Web-Service: Tell all applications on all web-servers to go into secondary read-only mode 
    Application switch to secondary read-only mode (data-entry fuse)
    Updatedb - secondary read-only mode (switches database to read-only)

    Web-Service: Create backup of database 
    Web-Service: Restore backup to new database
    Web-Service: Update new database with new schema 

    Deploy new application to apt-repository 
    (for windows, you will have to write your own custom deployment web-service)
    ssh into every machine in array_of_new_webapps
    run apt-get update
    then either 
    apt-get dist-upgrade
    OR
    apt-get install 
    OR 
    apt-get install --only-upgrade 
    depending on what you need
    -- This deploys the new application to all new chroots (or servers/VMs)

    Test: Test new application under test.domain.xxx
    -- everything that fails should throw an exception here
    commit myupdate;

    Web-Service: Tell all applications to send web-socket request to reload the pages to all clients at time x (+/- random number)
    @client: notify of reload and that this causes loss of unsafed data, with option to abort 

    @ time x:  Switch load balancer from array_of_old_webapps to array_of_new_webapps 
    Decomission/Recycle array_of_old_webapps, etc.

catch
        rollback myupdate 
        switch to read-write mode
        Web-Service: Tell all applications to send web-socket request to unblock read-only mode
end try