Is it safe and acceptable to install VS.NET on your production server? [closed]

Question

Usually, we install VS.NET on our production server, to solve problems easily with our product, if necessary.

Is this a good or bad idea?

Answer 1

Debugging and development should be done in a "safe" environment - something that is not mission critical. For example, you should have a development and/or QA server that you use for development and debugging.

EDIT: Your QA server should mirror your production server, so that you are able to debug in an environment similar, if not identical, to your production environment.

Answer 2

It really depends on whether you accept the risk that the installation brings with it:

• Hanging of production applications when someone attaches a debugger to the wrong application.
• It breaks with what is considered best practice, so what practice are you going to break with next? In the worst case people are going to be starting to do development tasks on production
• Potential problems with getting support, I would check with Microsoft if IIS and SQL Server etc are supported in a production environment where VS is installed.

You should also ask yourself what is most difficult with debugging the issue without VS on the server:

• Are you familiar with stack traces and how to read them?
• Do you know how to run a debug mode version of an application versus a release/free build?
• Did you know that you can use the SOS debugger extension to .NET applications with the Windows Debugging Tools?
• Have you considered using tools to automatically collect and report on server crashes?
• What are you doing to prevent problems occurring in production. Can you do some sort of static analysis, re-design modules based on problems, or use a technique like test-driven development?