Installing multiple instances of the same windows service on a server

Question

So we\'ve produced a windows service to feed data to our client application and everything is going great. The client has come up with a fun configuration request that requ

Answer 1

Old question, I know, but I've had luck using the /servicename option on InstallUtil.exe. I don't see it listed in the built-in help though.

InstallUtil.exe /servicename="My Service" MyService.exe

I'm not entirely sure where I first read about this but I haven't seen it since. YMMV.

Answer 2

I had a similar situation, where i to needed have a previous service, and an updated service running side by side on the same server. (It was more than just a database change, it was code changes as well). So I couldn't just run the same .exe twice. I needed a new .exe that was compiled with new DLLs but from the same project. Just changing the service name and display name of the service did not work for me, I still received the "service already existed error" which I believe is because I am using a Deployment Project. What finally did work for me is within my Deployment Project Properties there is a property called "ProductCode" which is a Guid.

After that, rebuilding the Setup Project to a new .exe or .msi installed successfully.

Answer 3

I didn't have much luck with the above methods when using our automated deployment software to frequently install/uninstall side-by-side windows services, but I eventually came up with the following which allows me to pass in a parameter to specify a suffix to the service name on the command line. It also allows the designer to function properly and could easily be adapted to override the entire name if necessary.

public partial class ProjectInstaller : System.Configuration.Install.Installer
{
  protected override void OnBeforeInstall(IDictionary savedState)
  {
    base.OnBeforeInstall(savedState);
    SetNames();
  }

  protected override void OnBeforeUninstall(IDictionary savedState)
  {
    base.OnBeforeUninstall(savedState);
    SetNames();
  }

  private void SetNames()
  {
    this.serviceInstaller1.DisplayName = AddSuffix(this.serviceInstaller1.DisplayName);
    this.serviceInstaller1.ServiceName = AddSuffix(this.serviceInstaller1.ServiceName);
  }

  private string AddSuffix(string originalName)
  {
    if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(this.Context.Parameters["ServiceSuffix"]))
      return originalName + " - " + this.Context.Parameters["ServiceSuffix"];
    else
      return originalName;
  }
}

With this in mind, I can do the following: If I've called the service "Awesome Service" then I can install a UAT verison of the service as follows:

InstallUtil.exe /ServiceSuffix="UAT" MyService.exe

This will create the service with the name "Awesome Service - UAT". We've used this to run DEVINT, TESTING and ACCEPTANCE versions of the same service running side-by-side on a single machine. Each version has its own set of files/configs - I haven't tried this to install multiple services pointing at the same set of files.

NOTE: you have to use the same /ServiceSuffix parameter to uninstall the service, so you'd execute the following to uninstall:

InstallUtil.exe /u /ServiceSuffix="UAT" MyService.exe

Answer 4

What I've done to make this work is to store the service name and display name in an app.config for my service. Then in my installer class, I load the app.config as an XmlDocument and use xpath to get the values out and apply them to ServiceInstaller.ServiceName and ServiceInstaller.DisplayName, before calling InitializeComponent(). This assumes you're not already setting these properties in InitializeComponent(), in which case, the settings from your config file will be ignored. The following code is what I'm calling from my installer class constructor, before InitializeComponent():

       private void SetServiceName()
       {
          string configurationFilePath = Path.ChangeExtension(Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().Location, "exe.config");
          XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
          doc.Load(configurationFilePath);

          XmlNode serviceName = doc.SelectSingleNode("/xpath/to/your/@serviceName");
          XmlNode displayName = doc.SelectSingleNode("/xpath/to/your/@displayName");

          if (serviceName != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(serviceName.Value))
          {
              this.serviceInstaller.ServiceName = serviceName.Value;
          }

          if (displayName != null && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(displayName.Value))
          {
              this.serviceInstaller.DisplayName = displayName.Value;
          }
      }

I don't believe reading the configuration file directly from ConfigurationManager.AppSettings or something similar will work as when the installer runs, it's run in the context of InstallUtil.exe, not your service's .exe. You may be able to do something with ConfigurationManager.OpenExeConfiguration, however in my case, this didn't work as I was trying to get at a custom configuration section that was not loaded.