I've removed .Net SP1 on one webhead and got things working again but I still see the Catastrophic failure error when the app pool restarts. Can anyone contribute to this thread it is making life hell and who needs that?

This error occurs 100% of the time on the first request after the application pool restarts, which is typically after 20 minutes of inactivity.  If you refresh the page, (shift + refresh) you will be able to successfully navigate to your portal.  I have found that a quick fix to this issue is to assign the user account I'm using for the UNC share to tha application pool, instead of network service.

If anybody has any questions, or needs clarification let me know.  I solve this problem everytime I set up a web farm.  Also, my solution seems more like a bandaid instead of an actual solution, so if anybody has any better ideas, I'm all ears.

HTH

Rick

Hi guys, I have a similar setup but with DFS storage (shouldnt matter) running successfully.

1. App Pool; if you are using a custom account to run the app pool under, make sure this account is available to both the IIS server and the File server. If your running AD, this wont matter. If the servers are not belonging to a domain, then the accounts will have to be created on both machines.

2. UNC share; check execute and write permissions are enabled in NTFS permissions and in Share permissions grant write access for the account specified in the app pool.

3. Caspol. You need to grant FullTrust rights using CasPol.exe to the UNC share from the IIS server. command will be similar to caspol -m -ag 1 -url file://\\SERVER\PATH\* FullTrust. (You should verify this command as this is off the top of my head!!!)

4. AppPool account group memberships. The account you created to run the app pool under, make sure it belongs to the IIS_WPG on the IIS server.

I think that is it. If your having trouble running the apppool you should check the event log under application for a WWW/IIS entry complaining that the app pool was stopped. Most likely a password issue with the user account running the app pool.

Good luck!