[XI 3.1] XI R3.1 and Webi Memory Issue

[Sheshachala5]

We upgraded from XI R2 SP2(FP2.6) on windows 2003SP1 box to XIR3.1
Its a 3 server cluster environment. We keep running into these issues even with a handful of sessions. Happens with Webi reports more or less consistent.

1) No Server was available to process request
2) The WebIntelligence Server is busy
3) Webi server memory is full.

Are there any recommended settings for Webi?

[jdh2n]

From what I have found, each individual WIReportServer.EXE process (or Webi Processing Server) has a limit of 1.8 – 2.0 GB or Virtual RAM. Once this limit is reached, the process will not service any additional requests or crash. Depending on the webi report utilization and report data size, this can be reached rather quickly.

In XI R2, there were very few options to help manage the memory used by each webi processing server. To resolve the issue you can install multiple Webi Processing Server on the same machine. (Vertical Scaling) Then reduce the number of maximum connections for each service to no more than 25. The documentation recommends no more the 25 concurrent connections (Maximum Connections:) per CPU and Service but the default is 50. This is configured in the CMC. This should help keep each individual WIReportServer.EXE process from utilizing no more than 1.8 GB of Virtual RAM. Once you have this configured, use Microsoft’s process explorer to monitor each WIReportServer.EXE process. If you still find that the limit is reached, reduce the number of maximum connections and / or add additional Webi Processing server to a second host.

In Xi 3.X, there is now built-in memory management. For each webi processing server. The service will now try to recapture memory based on the “Enable Memory Analysis” options. There are also three threshold setting related to memory analysis that can be configured. In short, the service will start killing connections until a suitable amount of memory is available. If you are seeing memory errors, it is possible that you have reached the upper limit threshold. The default is 1.5 GB. Also, the Maximum Documents Before Recycling and similar options should be resetting the process during idle times further reducing the issue. Although, in my opinion this does not resolve the issue completely under peak load situations and you might need to install multiple webi processing servers on the same host or a second host as mentioned above.

With that said, it is odd that you are having issues on a 3 server cluster under minimal load. The default webi processing settings should be sufficient to handle 75-100 concurrent requests across 3 servers. (Assuming that you are only running one process per server). Also, the help files in the CMC in XI 3.X are a good source for explaining all the webi processing setting in XI 3.x.

[Sheshachala5]

First of all thanks for the elaborate reply.


We have gone through these settings last year (most of what you were talking about), thats really very useful stuff someone like you shared with us last year.

Coming to R3, things got a little better after i initiated this post.
But i have noticed Webi bouncing itself off and killing a few sessions.
I think that Memory Analysis setting could have caused it. Not sure why it does that and kick out some users and scheduled reports to fail.
Isnt it supposed to do that when things are idle? i dont understand that part.

[rameshbalajiv]

Hi:

We are encountering similar issue of WebI Process crash and come back automatically.

We have a single server environment with very minimal load on the system and # of parallel connections are low. But still, I do see the WebI process crash.

I will try to increase the # of webI process to 2 and see whether that resolves.

Here are the configuration of WebI process for now :
Environment: XI R3; Windows 2000.

Web Intelligence Processing Service
Use Configuration Template
Document Cache Cleanup Interval (seconds): 120
Binary Stream Maximum Size (MB): 50
Cache Timeout (minutes): 4370
Memory Maximum Threshold (MB): 1800
Idle Document Timeout (seconds): 300
Server Polling Interval (seconds): 120
Universe Cache Maximum Size (Universes):
Disable Cache Sharing
Images Directory:
Maximum Document Cache Size (KB): 1000000
Output Cache Directory:
Maximum Documents per User: 5
Allow Document Map Maximum Size Errors
Maximum Documents Before Recycling: 50
Maximum Connections: 50
Idle Connection Timeout (minutes): 20
Maximum List Of Values Size (entries): 50000
Enable List Of Values Cache
List Of Values Batch Size (entries): 1000
Maximum Custom Sort Size (entries): 100
Memory Lower Threshold (MB): 1000
Timeout Before Recycling (seconds): 1200
Maximum Character Stream Size (MB): 5

I will go through the admin document for recommendations.
If you see any anomolies in the configuration, please let me know.
Thank You
Ramesh Vasudevan

[kmspsu93]

We are noticing this behavior is quite common when using Universes that are based on SAP OLAP sources (BEx queries specifically). We are in the early stages of investigation, but we are up to 4 customers that are experiencing this behavior and they all use SAP OLAP UNV exclusively. We are not seeing this behavior yet against RDBMS UNVs....yet.

[bdouglas]

We were receiving the Webi memory full until we updated 'desktop' memory on our servers - eg, went into the registry and changed the memory settings for the sessions spawned on the box.

Lookunder HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Subsystems for the key Windows - your value should be this:

%SystemRoot%\system32\csrss.exe ObjectDirectory=\Windows SharedSection=1024,3072,1024 Windows=On SubSystemType=Windows ServerDll=basesrv,1 ServerDll=winsrv:UserServerDllInitialization,3 ServerDll=winsrv:ConServerDllInitialization,2 ProfileControl=Off MaxRequestThreads=16

That memory section should help your Memory full issues - not sure about the rest of your issues.

Good luck,
Brent

[deskmem]

Hiya,

While i was looking for desktop memory topics i came onto this one. Does the forum cover desktop memory issues?

[bdouglas]

I would say yes, as long as it's somehow related to BO / Deski.

Brent

[windyh]

I lowered our "Cache Timeout" settings to 120 minutes to free up WIReportServer memory usage faster.