>I haven't yet needed to run a VFP EXE as a service but I may need to do so in a Server 2012 R2 environment. Can anyone point me to resources that show:
>
>- What needs to be done
>- Things to be aware of/gotchas
>- How to install/uninstall
>- How to manage, if not with the Windows Service NET START/NET STOP commands
>
>There are some out of date resources such as
>
>
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/calvin_hsia/archive/2004/12/13/282351.aspx>
http://www.tek-tips.com/faqs.cfm?fid=6355>
>but they both rely on SrvAny.EXE which was present up to and including Server 2003, but is no longer present in Server 2008 and later.
>
>There is a product called AlwaysUp (
http://www.coretechnologies.com/products/AlwaysUp/Apps/RunVisualFoxProAsAWindowsService.html ) which claims to be able to run VFP EXEs as services. Is this a good option?
We have been using alwaysup for about 10 months now and very happy with it. If your services has a GIU, you can get show the GUI through always up (Session 0), which is a big bonus if your service does crash in the early stages of development.
Automatic restarts based upon CPU and memory usage, logging events, emailing upon restarts, etc. Its definitely worth the few bucks.
We have been using the srvany for a couple of years ( which BTW you still can use on newer servers), but after one of our services got crashed periodically we realized we needed a reliable solution to the problem. AlwaysUp will not disappoint you.
Walter,