Information Store memory leak

[ssoulages]

We have Exchange 5.5 on a dual P4 1.2GHz w/ 1GB ram running NT4, SP6a. After a reboot, the Exchange Information Store uses around 35mb of memory. Within 5 hours, it will climb to almost all of the 1GB. I loaded Exchange SP4 but that did not help.

In addition, the Internet Mail Service take up to 10 minutes to start - or give an error message.

We have Trend scanmail eManager, as well as Arcserve Agents (Exchange, Open Files, and Client) installed.

Can anyone give me any idea why the store is suddenly using so much memory, or where the leak is?

 

[Grenage]

I believe that this is normal, and that it takes all the memory it can, giving some back if and when it is required.

 

[zoeythecat]

1GIG of RAM should be plenty to handle your Exchange. A couple of questions:

(1) The size of your Information Store database?

(2) Is the CPU going to a 100% when the RAM gets used up?

(3) What process is using up the RAM?

(4) I would research Trend Scanmail Emanger maybe even
contact them to ask if anything is in their
knowledgebase that points to this issue

(5) Regarding your Internet Mail Service taking a long
time to start. Here is an article that talks about
this but unfortunately the solution is to update
to latest service pack which you have already done

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;185996

(6) Check to make sure your paging files are setup
correctly.
(7) You may want to run Performance Monitor and select
some Exchange Server counters to hopefully build a
good baseline on what could be causing this.

 

[ssoulages]

Thanks Zoey,

Private: 12.5GB, Public: 3GB

Store.exe is using 893MB as of this writing.

I will check with Trend.

Paging file is set to 1GB on Drive C:

Cache hit is showing 100%
Queries/second < 15

Above stats gathered using Spotlight on Exchange Free version from Quest Software

A thought: I loaded Exchange Sp4, then followed it with NT Sp6a. Might I have negated any benefits of SP4 with NT 6a?

 

[zoeythecat]

SP4 and NT6A (2 separate animals. I don't think you negated any benefits of SP4).

At what point did this start happening? Was it after you installed/deinstalled any apps?

How are you on disk space on drive C where you have the paging file? If you are low on disk space you may want to move the paging file to a logical drive other than C that has more disk space.

 

[ssoulages]

It all started a few weeks ago, and I'm not aware of any software or hardware changes, besides updates to the Trend software. Since their site had little info on this issue, I will call them and ask.

The C: drive has 1.43GB free.

 

[kkleinsc]

Hi,
Grenage is right. Exchange 5.5 (Ex55)claims as much memory as possible. But there is a way to limit this. Have you run the Exchange Perfomance optimizer (perfwiz.exe) after you have applied SP4 for Ex55? There where some major changes on memory mangement in SP3 and SP4. My experience is that running perfwiz solves a lot around those issues. In perfwiz you can also limit momory usage to a certain amout of MB.
Another area of investigation is database fregmentation. Are you running the Online defragmentation? Check on the server properties and open the IS Maintenance tab.
Verify that the maintenace is running at least over night or on weekends.
Open the eventlog and filter on the application log for events with event id 1221. They will tell you how much &quot;white space&quot; is in your databases (directory, privv.edb, and pub.edb), . White space are empty database tables which can be reused (once being cleaned up) to store data again.
If you have a large amount of white space in your databases, I suggest to do an offline defragmentation. This can be done with a command line tool named eseutil.exe. This comes along with Exchange. Attention, eseutil is very powerful and can also harm your database seriously! Check on Microsoft web site for more details about eseutil. (

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;324672)

Regards,
Karsten

 

[zoeythecat]

Good info Karsten

 

[fuego007]

As Karsten stated, Exchange 5.5 will use as much available RAM as it has a need for. Unless this is causing performance issues, don't worry about it. To my knowledge, defragmenting the database won't affect memory usage.

Bob

 

[zoeythecat]

Agree with Karsten and Fueg007 but if the CPU is going to a 100% and causing the server to hang then try the steps listed. I was under the impression that the server was going to a 100%. But the Internet Mail Service taking 10 minutes to start may not be normal. The above article I listed talks about updating to the latest service pack will resolve this problem. I suspect maybe the IMS takes 10 minutes to start is because his IS is fairly large and it must take some time for all the services to start. So maybe this is normal also.

 

[ssoulages]

Karston,

How much is 'a large amount' in reference to white space? The public has around 20 MB, and the private has 2800 MB.

As mentioned earlier, I just loaded SP4, but it made little difference in this case. I'll run perfwiz tomorrow AM and see what it suggests.

To clarify, CPU is running less than 10% at all times. It's only the memory that is peaked.

Thanks!

Scott

 

[Grenage]

I guess that can't be normal, we use a Dual Pentium Pro system for our exchange server, with Priv.edb at 3GB.

No noticable slowness in starting services etc.

 

[zoeythecat]

Yeah, but his priv is 12.5GB and his PUB is over 3GIG. The services could take some time starting up after a reboot. However, if doing a simple stop/restart of the IMS when the server is already up then that would not be normal. Maybe he needs to clarify with MS.

 

[Grenage]

I was just comparing the size of mine along with the system speed (ours is rather slow but does the job).

 

[mabnot4u]

I am having the same problem, except on a Win 2000 Server. Has this problem been resolved? If so, what step were taken to fix.

 

[ssoulages]

Loading SP4 took care of some of the problems. Adding RAM helped also. I limited the amount of RAM that Exchange can use, so it's not eating all of the system's ram any longer. I am, however, still having performance issues that I believe are related to fragmentation. A call to Microsoft is next on my list to do.

 

[AyCaramba]

If you are using Trend Micro's Scan Mail 3.51 or 3.52 please go to their website. There is a hotfix for the REALSCAN.EXE file which resolves this STORE.EXE memory leak problem.

Went through this same problem with Exchange 5.5 running on W2Kserver SP3 with EXCHSP4 and hotfixes.

For 3.52 the download file is:
SMEX352HotFix06.zip

The TrendMicro Solution ID is 11979:

http://kb.trendmicro.com/solutions/solutionDetail.asp?solutionID=11979

Hope this helps and that this thread isn't stale...