>I think the re-cycling is intended to reduce the risk of problems caused by memory leaks, unreleased resources, etc. - so, in theory, it should be unnecessary. But I'd tend to allow occasional recycling as an extra safety net - is your startup overhead really slow enough to be an issue ?

Yes, the first hit takes about 20 seconds.

Also, this is just for phase 1 as once we go in production, there should never be a recycle.