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Dancing_homerFlag for Ireland

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Memory leak in store.exe with exchange 2003

Hi guys.

Have an exchange 2003 server running on Windows 2000 server SP4 . After a day or so the users complain that opening mail is extremly slow. THen there outlook locks up. When I look at the taskmanager the store.exe is using about 90% of the sytem resources . There are no messages in the event log relating to any memory problems. But it looks like a memory problem. If I try to stop the store it wont. I have to reboot the server and it works fine for awhile. I am also using sophos mailmonitor to scan incoming mail. I dont think mail monitor is the problem.

There are only 10 users on this server so it is not overloaded.

Any ideas
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David Wilhoit
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There are no known memory leaks of the nature you describe with E2K3, but you may have hit one, hard to say. Be detailed in your hardware config., how much memory? processor speed? hard drives? Other apps besides AV?

D
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bwinzenz

You say that you don't think that Mail Monitor is the problem, but have you tried stopping their service just to see what happens?  I don't think that you can rule out their product quite yet.  Don't limit your troubleshooting to just Exchange.

Ben
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ASKER

Ah No I have stopped mailmonitor. Excluded exchange directories from the scan. Will monitor it this evening. At 12.30 it was at 283,964 and slowly climbing.

The server has 512MB ram , There admin is going to put another 512 in it and see if that makes a difference. I reckon it will just prolong the time frame needed for a reboot.





You don't need to worry about the memory allocation.  That part is normal.  Exchange uses something called Dynamic Buffer Allocation to use as much physical memory as it can, and release some when the OS (or other apps) request it.

As an example, I have an Exchange 2000 server with 1.5gb of ram in it.  Store.exe consistently uses almost 1gb of physical memory, and uses almost 1.5gb total of Virtual memory.

What is not normal is for the server to be sluggish, or for store.exe to be constantly using 90% of the processor.  If it is just memory that store.exe is using a lot of, again, don't worry about that.  There are plenty of KB articles that describe this behavior (I'll dig some up if you need them).

Another document that you can refer to for help troubleshooting server performance issues is this:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2000/support/trouperf.mspx

Ben
Hi, there,

I'm dealing with the same problem right now. I'm in contact with a Sophos Engineer.
There is a problem with the mail monitor and the VSAPI in Exchange 2003 / 2003.

Sophos is working on a patch for Mailmonitor 1.7.1 at the moment.

I tested the early version of the patch, with no result.

I will keep you informed about this matter.

Kind Regards

Martin Holkamp
Thank you Martin, that's good info to have out here :)

D
Kidego,

Which brand of server are you using.
There is a known problem with HP, Compaq and Dell servers and the drivers which are used for the RAID controllers.

Kind Regards
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MartinHolkamp
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I had this problem too, but am running Server 2003 with Exchange 2003, SP1 with 1gb, so some of these will apply to you and some wont...

1.  Monitoring programs report that the Store.exe process consumes additional memory after you install Exchange Server 2003 SP1:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=867628

(this answers the question as to "Why does Store.exe look like it is taking all of my RAM?"  Bascially because the memory allocation reporting is different, the number in taskmgr is not an accurate represenation of it.  I use taskmgr to look at the processor utilization for store.exe, but really ignore the memory aspect)


2a. Exchange 2000 requires /3GB switch with more than 1 gigabyte of physical RAM
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=266096

and

2b. XADM: Using the /Userva Switch on Windows Server 2003-Based Exchange Servers
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810371

(These two bascially go hand in hand as in 2b, they tell you that you must use the /Userva switch if you use the /3GB switch.  These are highly suggested if you are using 1gb or more of physical ram, and are bascially memory utilization tweaks - nothing really severe in terms of what needs to be done, just add a couple of switches to the boot.ini file)

3. How to Optimize Memory Usage in Exchange Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815372

(some easy registry changes to reflect that you have more than 1gb of physical ram)


4. Disabled the Sophos scanning of the Information Store, but the scanner for inbound messages is still enabled.

This is something that I read in a couple of other places...I may go back and enable it, but whenever it kicks off, it uses 40-50% of the processor...To me, the scanning of inbound messages is more important, and does not seem to task the processor that much...

Hope this helps, it certianly did for me :)

JDW
I am having the same problem. Running Exchange 2003 on Windows 2000 server with sp 4. Cannot stop store.exe. Have to reboot machine. It runs ok for a few days, but in 2 or 3 days, it starts running really slow.

I am not suing any of the sophos stuff, but I do run Symantec Antivirus enterprise edition on the same server.

This has not been a problem until just  recently. I can't think of anything I have installed or done differently except maybe one of the critical updates from Microsoft that gets automatically downloaded might have had some effect.

Help!
Read my above comment, especially the ones that specifically address "Exchange 2003", rather than "Windows 2003".  It seems (IMO) that Exchange 2003 interacts with other software (and the operating system) quite differently than Exchange 2000....which I NEVER had any of these problems with.

I would look into the KB articles that ask you to add the /3gb and /userva switches as well as the registry entries - also....see if your virus scanner is using a lot of processor time....even though you are not running Sophos, I would be curious to see if it is Exchange 2003 that does not play nice with active virus scanners (not the filter that is run when a message comes in, but the actual scanning of the mail store).

See if that helps any....it sure did for me

JDW