Windows service reconnection strategies

I'm currently working on a Windows service (my first) and I'm wondering how to handle disconnect events and the like. In essence, this Windows service polls our Exchange servers for new emails. Once an email is received we parse it and insert it into a database. Now, I have everything working so long as everything is working in my favour. Since that is impossible to maintain I need to look for ways to ensure my service stays on line regardless of what may happen that is out of my control (minus the server hosting the service that is).

The main issues I can foresee are our Exchange servers going down for whatever reason or losing internet connectivity. Two problems which can happen several times a year.

Current开发者_运维知识库ly, if an exception is thrown regarding connectivity issues I keep attempting to connect every n minutes with a 30 second time out. So say our Exchange servers go down (either planned maintenance or unforeseen events) for 2 hours then the service would try and reconnect every n minutes until a connection is made.

Is this a sustainable strategy to ensure my service always stays online? If not, what is a better way?

What I want to avoid is my service going down because Exchange had issues making me have to manually restart my Windows service.

Thank you.

Your strategy sounds like the only thing that's practical.

It may also be worth considering adding the ability to view event logs from the service remotely so you can diagnose issues that you don't currently know about. If you're really paranoid, a second "watcher" service could be used to periodically check the primary service and report if it fails.