How to prevent IIS from shutting down Web Site when not in use? : <p>I have a web application hosted under IIS. It is a data warehouse, and during its startup process it requires instantiating a large set of items in memory (takes roughly ~20 minutes to fully set up). Because this website is critical to our company, this system <strong>must be online 100%</strong> during the daytime, and only can be restarted during off-work hours.</p>

<p>For some reason, this web application seems to be "offline" when there is no usage for some time. I know this because the cache is not fully instantiated when the website is visited. This is unacceptable.</p>

<p>It is not clear to me why the website is shut off. The application pool is only set to recycle daily at 4:00 AM (it is 11 AM now). </p>

<p>Are there other settings which I'm not aware of on the IIS part that causes it to shut down the website automatically?</p>

<p>Addl Note: The website does not shut off automatically when running in <strong>IISExpress</strong> in Visual Studio. Only the production version hosted on IIS shuts off.</p>

<p>Here's a screen of the Advanced Settings for the Application Pool the web site is running under. (Not sure if it's useful.)</p>

<p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/J86DI.png" rel="noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/J86DI.png" alt="Application Pool Settings"></a></p>

<p>I'm on IIS 7.5, Server 2008 R2. It is an ASP.NET 5 Web App.</p>
