title: What's the best way to deploy an executable process on a web server?
body: <h2>The original question:</h2>
  
  <p>The title of this question might be a bit clumsily phrased, but here's the situation:</p>
  
  <p>I have a .NET web project deployed on my server.  It's still in beta, so there's a lot of releasing and re-releasing happening.  </p>
  
  <p>I have also written a C# executable in the same VS solution (call it "admin.exe") that runs in the background on the server, periodically performing certain business rule integrity checks and making appropriate insertions to a warning table in the DB.</p>
  
  <p>Question is: what's the best way to deploy this app so that it gets updated whenever I make a new release?  It should be running all the time in between releases, so ideally I'd like some sort of setup whereby the shutdown-deploy-startup process involves the minimum possible number of steps.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>
  
  <h2>Edit - Bounty started</h2>
  
  <p>The answers given thus far have been helpful and interesting, but haven't provided me with a clear, concise and elegant solution.  Please do not assume I have extensive knowledge of deployment projects, because I don't.  Bounty goes to the person who can provide a solution that does the following:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Publish the latest version of the web site;</li>
  <li>Shut down any instances of admin.exe that are running on the server;</li>
  <li>Update admin.exe;</li>
  <li>Launch admin.exe;</li>
  <li>All of the above should be done preferably in one step, or as few steps as possible, seeing as it will be done repeatedly throughout the life of the product; and</li>
  <li>All of the above should be done preferably without requiring installation of any 3rd party software.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Thank you for your help!</p>
  
  <p><strong>Minor edit - clarification</strong></p>
  
  <p>I think a lot of the solutions offered thus far have overestimated the complexity of the problem, so let me clarify: everything that is to be deployed, only has to be deployed on <strong>one</strong> computer, which also happily has Visual Studio available with all source code.  I only need to (1) publish the web site to the web folder, and (2) shut down, reinstall and restart admin.exe on the same server.  Isn't there a simple way of doing this in one step?  Can it be done with a VS Deployment project?</p>