High Memory Utilization On Windows 2012 Server

[jreith]

Hello,

Let me start by saying that I am not experiencing any serious performance issues with my Progress (10.2A SP1 hot fix 2) database, so this may not be an issue at all.

We recently moved our database from Windows 2003 to 2012. Within a day of going live on the new server, I noticed that the memory utilization (using task manager) stays around 98 to 99% of 32 GB. It stays there until I stop the database and then it drops to around 10 or 15%. After rebooting the server and starting the database it starts out around 18% and then sometime later (usually overnight) after a few users have logged in, it is back up to 99%. Over the weekend, I added another 16 GB of physical memory and by Monday afternoon it was back to 99% with only 3 users logged in (Labor Day).

Like, I said, no performance issues to mention, except after running for about 5 weeks without restarting, we began having slow performance with WebSpeed processes. After restarting the server, the WebSpeed performance was back to normal. I plan to restart the server every couple of weeks to avoid this issue.

I don't remember seeing high memory usage on 2003 Server, so I'm just curious.

Thanks,
John

 

[TheMadDBA]

It all depends on where the memory is being used. There are some differences with 2008 and 2012 about how much memory is used for file system caching compared to older versions like 2003... But I suspect you might be running into the issue with probkup not releasing memory starting with Windows 2008 and up... This KB has the details Progress KB - PROBKUP online uses all system memory on Windows 2008 64-bit

A fix is available in 10.2B04 or any version of V11. There are some workarounds in the KB that may or may not solve your issues.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

What runs on the server? Just the DBs or also the WebSpeed broker/agents?

 

[Chris Hughes]

Just wanted to second what MadDBA says.
This version of Progress was widely deployed in our user base and customers experienced this as soon as they migrated to Windows 2008.

I've never ran it on 2012 - it isn't supported on that platform - you would need 10.2b and service pack 7 (or maybe 8 I forget).

If you can't upgrade (10.1c SP4 - would be easiest without a compile), there are some tools around to claim the file cache back.

This is Microsofts recognition of the problem - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/976618

Cheers

 

[jreith]

Thanks for all the replies. It probably is the PROBKUP that runs each night. We plan to upgrade to 10.2B06 later this year so hopefully we won't have any major issues until then. In the meantime, I will check out the workaround and the Microsoft link.

Yes, we are running the DB plus WebSpeed agents. When I stopped the WebSpeed brokers, the memory usage did not lower. Only after stopping the DB did the memory usage go down.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

We plan to upgrade to 10.2B06 later this year

That seems an odd choice of version. 10.2B06 isn't certified with Server 2012 or 2012 R2 and still has lots of bugs that are fixed in later SPs. Why not move to SP08 at the very least?

 

[jreith]

Why not move to SP08 at the very least?

I'm checking on that with our software provider. We run an application called Monarch Foundation from efi (formerly Hagen) and they provide the Progress applications and support. We jumped the gun by upgrading to Server 2012 before they officially supported it.

I ran RAMMap.exe as suggested by the Microsoft link and the largest portion of memory in use is shown under 'Mapped File'. I was expecting it to be 'Metafile' which would point towards a system cache issue as I understand it. I plan to monitor the memory usage during the probkup following my next server restart just to verify when the memory goes into use.

 

[TheMadDBA]

That sounds exactly like the probkup issue. More info in this kb.....

Progress KB - All memory is being used up which forces a restart of the server every night


Windows 2008 R2 64-bit
OpenEdge 10.x
Question/Problem Description
All memory is being used up which forces a restart of the server every night
Client has poor performance
Memory is 100% used
All memory is used
RamMap indicates that most of the memory is being used for mapped files mostly the database extents.
Used memory is high but the cached memory is low.