FMSA10 - High CPU usage by fmadminserver.exe HELP!

[PGageler]

I have just tried to update FileMaker Server Advanced from 9 to 10. The program installed OK, but the server is now very sluggish. Examining Task Manager on the Server, it seems that one process - fmadminserver.exe - is hogging the CPU. running at 98-99%, only occasionally dropping momentarily to something less. Total memory usage is only about 20-30% of the 1.25gb total RAM.

Opening the Server Admin Console shows some database files to have opened, while others are "opening".

Unless I can get this process under control, I will have to get our IT guys to roll-back to the previous version.

Any clues as to what might be happening and/or causing this?

Edited March 22, 2009 by Guest

[Ocean West]

Did you remove (uninstall 9 ) before installing 10?

[PGageler]

Thank for the quick response. Yes - I followed the instructions provided by FileMaker.

Interestingly, I have now found that after about half an hour of CPU usage running at pretty much 100%, it then settles down to behave normally. But in that period immediately after starting the Server/Service, the server is basically unavailable for anything else while fmadminserver.exe is doing its thing.

I thought it might have been a particular database, so I opened and closed each one separately in the FM Admin Console - but they all opened and closed quickly and easily.

[Vaughan]

There's 99% cpu usage because the files are being opened. It an take 10-15 minutes to open lots of big files.

The first time FMS opens a file it performs a consistency check. That's why the files opened quickly after you closed them: FMS didn't check them a second time.

[genevieve charbon]

For me FMS 10 on Mac OS 10.5.6 is awfully slow, even well after start, my users are complaining.

cPU utilisation ius much higher thn FMS 9 but without speeding things up, in fact it's a lot of slowr I will return back to FMS 9

Morever with FMP 10 Mac clients it produces XML import hangs

[PGageler]

I am still having this problem.

On start-up the application fmadminserver.exe (a Java program) runs at 99% CPU usage for almost 40 minutes, after which time it drops to almost nothing.

Also, after one to two days of operation the Admin Console no longer provides any up-to-date data or control - the information displayed is the same as it was the last time the Console was used. Nevertheless hosted databases continue to behave normally and back-up and other scripts run.

After uninstalling and reinstalling Java, re-starting the FM Service and rebooting the Server multiple times I have managed to identify that the high CPU usage has nothing to do with FMSA's consistency check - it happens even if no databases are being hosted.

FMSA10 is being hosted on the same VM Ware Server as I had previously run FMSA9:

• AMD Opteron Processor 875, 2.2 GHz, 1Gb RAM
  
• Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition, Service Pack 2

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Vaughan]

The admin console should not be left open and running continuously.

The 1GB of RAM probably isn't enough.

[PGageler]

Thanks. No - the admin console is not left open continuously. It's just that at some point in time it no longer updates, and so the next time I open it, it show people connected who are no longer using the databases.

My IT people are insistent that memory is not the problem - they temporarily gave me some more RAM, then when that didn't seem to make any difference dropped it back to 1GB. In the Windows Task Manager, memory usage stays pretty steady at around 30%.

[PGageler]

A solution at last! Someone on another forum suggested that the problem might relate to FMSA needing to load and cache its log files (the ability to view them from within the Server Admin Console is of course a new feature in version 10).

Even though I had followed FileMaker's instruction regarding uninstalling the earlier version of FMSA, it seems as though the FMSA10 installation still retained all the old log files. While the event and access logs were each less than 40mb, the web publishing logs were huge - one had grown to around 400mb.

After deleting the log files altogether, the FM Service now starts up straight away, with CPU usage peaking only for a few seconds. I have now turned off most of the logging, and set the maximum size for the (mandatory) event log and the access log to 20mb.