Memory Problems using FMSA 11 on a Windows 2008 R2 64 bit machine

[BrentHedden]

I've got FMSA11.02 installed on a Windows Server 2008 R2 64 bit machine. 8 gigs of RAM, which all is dedicated to the database cache. Everything appears to be running fine.

When the database server isn't running, memory usage is at about 11%. When I first start the Database server and all files are opened, the system is using about 19% memory. As soon as a FMS scheduled backup starts, that's when all hell breaks loose. The memory usage jumps up to around 80%. Even after the backup completed, the usage stays constant at 80% or higher, which is what is bothering me. It doesn't matter if there are users on the system at the time or not - the available memory is dramatically decreased whenever a backup occurs. Which of course causes performance problems.

The only way to clear out this high memory usage is to stop and start the database server.

Apparently I'm not the only one to observe this problem - http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/8ba8dff92d but as far as I can tell, there are no solutions.

Has anyone else noticed this and/or have a solution to this problem?

[Wim Decorte]

FMS is still a 32-bit process so it doesn't really benefit from the 8GB of memory.

How high is the FMS cache set in the preferences?

[BrentHedden]

Thanks for chiming in. 800 MB is set for the Database Cache.

Even if it couldn't take advantage of all this memory, would it be detrimental if it at least was assigned? I tested this backup procedure with 800mb & 400mb assigned to the cache, and it didn't make any noticeable change in the amount of system memory used.

What is the max in a 32 bit environment - 4Gb?

[Wim Decorte]

Setting the FMS cache to 800MB is good.

You might want to do some performance monitoring and see what the memory counters have to say, and the list of processes.

[spongebob]

Hi Im interested if you have found a solution to this?

Does anyone know if Filemaker is adressing this in the next update 11v3 perhaps?

Anyone knows when thats coming out?

[BrentHedden]

FileMaker Inc. IS aware of this problem, but I don't know on what kind of priority they are giving it to fix the problem.

I've found a few other users who have had the same problem. The "nice" thing about this bug is that it doesn't really affect system performance as far as I could tell. My server has more than enough memory installed on it so when this problem comes up, there is still plenty of free memory available. I'm presuming it's a problem with FMS being a 32 bit program run on a 64 bit OS.

[MikeOttevaere]

Hi there,

I did post one of the FileMaker Forum posts mentioned here.

Now after 2 months of monitoring, I came to the conclusion that the fact that all memory is used on the server running the FileMaker Server Advanced 11 doesn't have any influence on the performance of the system.

In the monitoring data and graphs we clearly notice that although the physical memory is used up to 99%, there is no raise of the usage of the virtual memory. That means that no page swapping is happening, the system just uses its physical resources completely.

So although it looks alraming, it isn't at all.

Regards,

Mike Ottevaere

[Wim Decorte]

Thanks for the info Mike!

[ryyno10]

Although this is an old post, I had the same issue with Windows 2008 R2 (w/ FMS 11) that was left un-resolved by a previous DBA. The FMS update patch version 3 resolved this issue... If you read the "Read Me" document along with this update, take notice that a memory leak is associated with FMS hosted databases close to the size of the RAM installed on the server.