WatchDirectory Forum - Slow task start up

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Slow task start up (Read 4960 times)

Verne

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Slow task start up
Apr 7^th, 2015 at 7:33pm

We just put another server online this year. Windows 2008 server running on a Quad Core Xeon cpu with 4GB of memory.

We have WatchDirectory 4.8.8 running 63 tasks on this server and a couple of WatchFTP tasks. That is pretty much it.

After the server has been running a few days the starting of tasks seems to take over 5 minutes before it will finally show that the task is started. Stopping tasks do shut them down immediately.

When I look at Task Manager the cpu is barely being used. Normally shows over 95% for System Idle and the performance tab shows only 1.7 GB of memory being used.

We really can't afford to reboot the server in the middle of the week but this does clear it up for a few days before it becomes a problem again.

I have other applications that I can start and stop on this server with no delay at all. So I am somewhat perplexed as to what to do about WatchDirectory taking so long to start a task.

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Gert

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Re: Slow task start up
Reply #1 - Apr 8^th, 2015 at 8:53am

Hello Verne,

I am not sure what is happening and why this is not an issue after a computer reboot.

Are those tasks set to run as a Windows Service? Do you also see this long delay when you run such a task as a normal program?

63 tasks is a lot by the way, perhaps there is a way to "combine" some of them? See this blog for some tips: http://blog-en.gdpsoftware.com/2009/05/how-many-tasks-does-watchdirectory.html

Gert Rijs - gert (at) gdpsoftware (dot) com
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Verne

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Re: Slow task start up
Reply #2 - Apr 8^th, 2015 at 3:55pm

Well to give you some perspective I have 3 other servers running pretty much the same configuration that do not have this delay when starting and stopping tasks and they run 2 to 3 times as many tasks. And I pretty much multitask everything I can.

All three of these servers have no issues with tasks starting up.
1) Windows 2003 with 2GB ram running 128 WD Tasks & 9 WFTP
2) Windows 2003 with 2GB ram running 173 WD Tasks & 12 WFTP
3) Windows 2008 with 4GB ram running 173 WD Tasks & 12 WFTP.

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Gert

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Re: Slow task start up
Reply #3 - Apr 9^th, 2015 at 9:22am

I would expect a 2GB server to have trouble to boot on its own...

You didn't answer my question. Are those tasks set to run as a Windows Service? Do they start quicker if you run them "normally"?

Every Windows Service needs a little bit of special memory reserved by Windows. Maybe that memory gets fragmented/exhausted in time and causes this issue. I found a possible solution here: http://myblog4fun.com/archive/2011/02/01/windows-services-slow-to-start.aspx

Gert Rijs - gert (at) gdpsoftware (dot) com
Blog: http://blog-en.gdpsoftware.com/
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Verne Junior Member Offline Posts: 53	Re: Slow task start up Reply #4 - Apr 13^th, 2015 at 1:49pm We do not run any tasks as a service.
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Gert YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 2362 The Netherlands	Re: Slow task start up Reply #5 - Apr 14^th, 2015 at 7:01am I really have no idea what could cause this. Can you confirm that it is really the TASK that is slow to start, not just the user interface (WD Control Center) that is slow to report the task as running... To start a task on the command line enter Code: wdrun.exe -start taskname
Back to top	Gert Rijs - gert (at) gdpsoftware (dot) com Blog: http://blog-en.gdpsoftware.com/ End Alzheimer's: http://www.alz.org&& WWW IP Logged

Verne

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Re: Slow task start up
Reply #6 - Apr 14^th, 2015 at 9:04pm

Hi Gert,
We just did our normal patch cycle this past weekend so will have to wait a few days before it starts hanging again.

But what I was doing was starting the task with WDCC and then looking in the task directory to see when the PID.txt file would show up. I would also have the task history database open as well to see if they were all kind of syncing up at once. As far as I could tell as soon as the PID.txt file was written to in the task directory, the task would go green in WDCC and the task history database would start to populate with its startup initialization.

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Gert YaBB Administrator Offline Posts: 2362 The Netherlands	Re: Slow task start up Reply #7 - Apr 15^th, 2015 at 7:08am How big are your history.db files (same directory as pid.txt)? I think the only thing WD is doing before creating the pid.txt is a cleanup of the history.db. As a test, when you see the tasks being slow to start again, create a new task (empty history.db) and see if that task is also slow to start.
Back to top	Gert Rijs - gert (at) gdpsoftware (dot) com Blog: http://blog-en.gdpsoftware.com/ End Alzheimer's: http://www.alz.org&& WWW IP Logged

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