How to disable ASP.NET site if critical services are unavailable

Question

How are you going to host the site offline if the database is down or the database adapter is missing / failed to load / etc?

I ask in the context of ASP.NET MVC 3, but this can be applied to any ASP.NET site.

Say, somewhere around App_Start you are loading an assembly to access data, and this is missing and / or something else fails. In this case, the site cannot actually function.

I am looking for a decent / elegant way to host a site in maintenance mode just like App_Offline.htm works.

Answer 1

catch (ReallyBadException ex) {
    Utilities.EmailAdministrator();
    File.Copy(@"c:\templates\App_Offline.htm", @"c:\path\to\website\App_Offline.htm");
}

Answer 2

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