Layers won't load for first use of the day

[KarenEllett]

The first time my application is used during the day, there's always a few layers that won't load. (Appears random, different each time.)  If you hit F5 or refresh, as soon as the application refreshes, everything works fine.  If the app is closed and not used for long enough, several hours, the same issue will reoccur.  I've tried everything; in Server Manager, I've set the refresh properties to shortly before the start of the work day, and I've set the services in question to recycle every 20 minutes.  I've set the timeout for the application pool in IIS to 60 minutes. I've gone into the map.config and explicitly set "DisableClientCaching=True" for every layer.  Nothing has worked.  I considered making a behavior that simply redirects back to the url when the map is loaded, but I'm not sure how to do that without it creating a refresh loop.

Does anyone have any ideas?  I've been fighting with this for over a week now.

[TomMagdaleno]

Have you tried clearing the browser cache?
Have you tried setting everything to High Isolation?
Have you tried setting the minimum number of processors to zero so it will spool it up only when used?

[KenBuja]

"Sleepy" services have been complained about for a while. Search for the word "sleepy" to see if any of the threads help.

[RickKoehler]

This seems to be a behavior that has existed in the ArcGIS Server Silverlight API since time immemorial, or at least since we've been using it. It has persisted through multiple new releases, and appears impervious to logical solutions. For the longest time, an Esri search on the topic would suggest you make sure:

1. Your server is running;

2. Your service is running;

3. Your URL is correctly formed.

and that's all that would be said. Off-the-record, you hear "Oh yeah, it does that." Well that's helpful.

Since a simple refresh typically would eliminate the problem, it kind of excludes any of the "is your computer plugged in" suggestions given.

Newer releases (3.2) seem less plagued by it, but it sitll pops up, as you say, randomly. We've tried pretty much everything anyone has suggested, short of goats bones and chicken blood.

The only thing that seems to make a significant difference is setting the time that the service refreshes (set by default to midnight) to various other times, so that not all services are trying to refresh simultaneously at 12:00am.

That has worked for us, about 97% of the time.

Moving to the JSAPI at this point looks like the best option, even though that means scuttling any past development work using the SLAPI. HTH.