I'm creating a distributed application that includes a lot of services and I'm looking for the technology that allows me to create and manage a lot of services easily.

I know managing and deploying windows services is not fun. I'm thinking of using ASP.NET MVC as service host of my services where each controller action becomes essentially a service and I can communicate with a service via simple HTTP request and responses and not have to deal with complexity if i use something like WCF.

Services need to be isolated and asp.net requests are isolated as far as i know, i.e. if a request throws an exception it will not effect other running requests.

But I still have questions about the management of the services. How will it be possible to see which services are running, stopping and resuming services. Also ASP.NET MVC are passive, i.e. they only do something upon a request but what if i want to service that initiates work by itself?