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I have 3 IIS web servers in an ARR web farm. When we do rolling releases, we take one server offline as a backup server and move it into an "Unavailable State" I have noticed that with ARR, servers will not stay in this state...they come back online automatically hours or days later. Does anyone know how to remedy this situation? This is very bad as the server that is down is typically not running the correct version of our code.

I need to keep a server unavailable until i tell it otherwise.

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I have the exact opposite problem... Even when my servers are healthy they go from available to unavailable automatically. And they never return to the available state. – JohannesH Oct 20 '10 at 9:35
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I would suggest configuring a health test to check the version to the version of the code that you want to run. When you make changes simply change the response match. You should also disallow new connections on a server you have a maintainence window on. This will drain the connections off and not allow them on regardless of the health of the server

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I thought about that too, problem is, many times the stuff that changes is buried deep behind user input and validations. – Chris Kooken Jun 9 '10 at 14:03
I have noticed the same problem with Drain...if I put a server in a drain state for a day or so, it will come out of it automatically. – Chris Kooken Jun 9 '10 at 14:05
As far as the health check goes, it doesn't matter where the change is you could simply stick a text file in the directory to query for a version number. How are you handling version control today? – Jim B Jun 9 '10 at 14:18
the drain issue is troubling...I haven't seen that. I'll try it on my farm to see if it happens over a few days- maybe it's a bug but you'd figure someone else would have reported it by now – Jim B Jun 9 '10 at 14:19
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