Graceful shutdown works only for TAS deployments with multiple Windows 2019 cells

Products

• VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs

Issue/Introduction

Applications running on a single Windows 2019 cell TAS deployment may not gracefully shutdown during a deployment upgrade.

Environment

Cause

When a Windows app is stopped, during a `cf stop` or during a deployment upgrade, it is allowed 10 seconds to shutdown gracefully. Apps can make use of this feature by providing a control handler for the CTRL_SHUTDOWN_EVENT. Graceful shutdown is not supported on deployments running versions prior to Windows Server 2019.

When doing a deployment upgrade on a TAS deployment, the rep must be able to place application instances onto another cell in order for the existing instances to shut down gracefully. On deployments with one Windows 2019 cell, or where other Windows cells do not have the capacity to receive application instances that are being evacuated, the running applications may not shut down gracefully. This is a known issue.

Resolution

If the TAS deployment has two or more Windows 2019 cells present, then the running applications will be able to shutdown gracefully on a deployment upgrade.

Alternatively, if you have a deployment with just one Windows 2019 cell, run `cf stop <app>` on each application, perform the upgrade, and then `cf start <app>` each application. This will result in a graceful shutdown.