Avoid UNC file share to prevent File Change Notification issues

Recently we were experienced many unexpected application pool recycling with File Change Notifications (FCN) on our newly created Sandbox Sitecore CM instances. Every few hours (ranging from 20-40 hours) only one of two CM instances was getting restarted automatically with below error.

Change Notification for critical directories. File Change Notification Error in App_LocalResources HostingEnvironment initiated shutdown CONFIG change HostingEnvironment caused shutdown

What we tried

After spending a good amount of time on it, we hypothetical thought for few workarounds to do like
  • Stop Anti-virus on server
  • Use Process Monitor to check a File System for Web-root and Temporary Internet Files, etc. folders to know what's actually causing this
  • Check there's no access given on the web-root to any unauthorized user. 
But all looked good for us, even not getting much help from Google as well. So final option we had to debug the crash dumps.

One more thought came in mind that recycling is happening only on one instance, which is using Sublayouts from other Sitecore instance using UNC file share, and that other instance never got recycled! We know that DFS was the best option here, but we were not able to digest that UNC share can really cause this issue. At the same time we found a nice post where someone already faced the same issue and they fixed it by stopping UNC path sharing for sublayouts. And yes, it worked for us too.
(Note: Recycling is not happening because of number of re-compilations - "numRecompilesBeforeAppRestart")

- http://www.dnnsoftware.com/forums/threadid/318762/scope/posts/file-change-notification-issues-web-farm-over-unc-share
- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tess/archive/2006/08/02/686373.aspx

What we Learned and Investigated:

- We learnt one more reason that can recycle the application pool
- Avoid using UNC sharing for ASPX, ASCX, RESX, App_Code files, etc. compilable files and Use DFS for them, what Sitecore recommends in Sitecore Scalability Guide.

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