I currently have 80 websites running in a single dnn installation (3.2.2) using a small webfarm.  There are 4 webservers (iis) hitting a MS SQL server (2005) backend,  the file system is stored on a separate file server via UNC paths.   The 80 websites are split among about 15 application pools per server, with varying number of sites per pool based on SLA requirements.

Any time I upload a new or upgraded module or make a web.config change I have serious issues getting the websites to restart.  Some websites/application pools will restart after 15-20 minutes, other will hang indefinitely needing me to recyle the pool or in some cases actually restart IIS to get the all of the sites running.  It seems like there is some kind of locking/blocking or contention going on but I haven't been able to identify anything specific.  There are no locks being held on the SQL server so I'm fairly certain is isn't a DB issue.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be causing this or how to begin troubleshooting this problem?

Thanks,

Steve

I'm aware of the upgrade values, however from what I can tell it isn't realistic for us at this time. We have made some small changes to the 3.2 membership routines to allow for the same username in 2 different portals and not be the same user. In the new membership provider this has become more difficult and will require writing  custom upgrade scripts.

I use 4.5 for other sites but the risk/reward/cost ratio doesn't make a lot of sense for this installation.