Has PCo ever used up all server RAM on startup for anyone else?

[Former Member]

We recently had to rebuild one of our servers that had PCo on it. After completing the installation of PCo 2.3, I defined about 12 identical agent instances that all pointed to the same source system (to Kepware, our OPC DA 3.0 server), tested out a couple of them to make sure they worked, then set all 12 of them to "Automatic (Delayed Start)" in the Windows Services dialog (not in the PCo Management Console), then restarted the server.

After the server restarted, I was unable to remote into it. Talked to our Windows server guys, and they said the server was running hot (using 100% of RAM). They rebooted the server in safe mode, set the newly created PCo services to manual, and then rebooted again. That fixed the problem, but I don't know what I did to cause this. This type of configuration didn't cause problems on our QA server or on the earlier incarnation of our PROD server.

Using PCo 2.3. Currently in demo mode; will re-register soon.

Has this happened to anyone else, and how do you avoid it?

Thanks,

Greg

[former_member196557 · Accepted solution]

Hi Greg,

What Version and Patch of PCo 2.3 are you using?

What Windows Server version?

What processes/services were using how much RAM each?

Check to make sure that the Kepware server runtime service is set to start Automatically (not delayed start), and that Net.Tcp Port Sharing Service is set to start Automatically.

Regards, Steve

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Well, this issue didn't repeat itself. It may have been a non-PCo-related fluke, or it may be that my actions described below resolved the problem.

Steve, your answer reminded me of your answer to my previous question "With numerous PCo agent instances, agents don't load on server restart". Therefore I did the following, which I'd recommend for all PCo users. Coincidentally or not, after I did this, the problem didn't happen again.

1.  Make sure that each Agent Instance has a startup dependency to Windows service it is reading from

2.  Using the Windows Services control panel, set the startup mode for each Agent Instance to Automatic - Delayed Start.

3. Make sure that the Windows service that PCo is reading from is set to start Automatically (not delayed start).

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

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[former_member196557 · Accepted solution]

HI Greg,

Your procedure is the correct one.

Especially for OPC Server services. With a Service dependency defined, the Agent Instance will not start execution until ALL of the dependent services are already started. However, with OPC Server services, if the service has not already started, an OPC Server connect request will attempt to start the OPC Service through COM/DCOM.  It is possible that multiple COM/DCOM start requests against the same OPC Server service could have cause some issues, memory consumption being one of them.

Regards, Steve