Here's my setup. I have a production deployment with one web role having 6 instances and 2 of them (0 and 5) are continuously failing and being recycled because Microsoft has rolled out a Guest OS upgrade (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2859054/en-us) that broke my code.
The only way to fix it is to change my code, prepare a new service package, create a staging deployment and do "swap vip". The problem is when I click "swap vip" in the Management Portal I see an error message saying there's another operation in progress that requires exclusive access. So "swap vip" simply doesn't work. Not only it doesn't work but it doesn't work when it is most needed.
I could try an in-place upgrade but there's a chance that it breaks my production further and then I have a serious service disruption. Also there's a chance that the upgrade request is simply rejected because of "another operation requiring exclusive access". The only way I found was to delete the production deployment and then immediately "swap vip" - I had a minute or two of downtime but at least I had my code changes pushed.
So how should I have pushed my code changed is "swap vip" refused to work? What's the recommended way?