I have a WCF service that might grow in memory. I put a memory limit on the private bytes to recycle the app pool after 500m of memory usage. I noticed that my w3wp.exe process can get to 600megs when it decides to recycle and any currently executing client requests get a communication error. Is there a way for iis to wait for requests to complete before recycling the process?
SnapOverflow
Recycling is killing an process when it reaches certain conditions, replacing it with another one.
In terrible-analogy-land, it's a bit like ensuring that the size of a balloon can only ever be one foot square by having pins positioned in a one-foot sphere - when the balloon hits the limit, it pops and you replace it with a new one.
Processes being recycled get up to {Shutdown Time Limit} to shut themselves down, from the point at which they're told to recycle.
If they can't finish their work in that time {90 second default}, that's it.
If you're using a WCF host with a persistent connection, then I think the answer's no; but the answer is also "pick larger limits". What you've described as your policy is: "I want my app to die when it hits 500MB." But the app itself doesn't know about that limit; it's just trying to grow as it needs to.
Load test your app without a limit; see what it gets to and what might indicate a leak; set limits at the point a leak is indicated.