mrbios Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 Every night at 1AM the sims discover data transfer task runs, once this starts my servers CPU load hits 100% almost constant until about 11AM which is crazy! killing the data transfer service causes the load to instantly drop back to normal levels. First question, what is this actually doing? I'm not personally a user of it, i just installed the piece of junk, but is there anything anyone can recommend i try to resolve this?
PhilNeal Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 If you'd like to raise a case we will investigate - there is no way this task should be lasting 10 hours.
Rawns Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 (edited) Like Phil says, the task should not take 10 hours, however I have seen the task cause high CPU loads which I think is normal, hence why the task is set to run at 1am, and why it's recommended users don't run full transfers manually during the day. I found in a couple of sites that the Discover log file had sometimes grown to crazy sizes which seems to cause the transfer task to run longer then it should. Check both the Discover.ldf and SIMS.ldf files and if necessary, truncate them and release free space to get them down in size. The transfer may also be failing and depending on your time-out period, it is retrying through to 11am. I think it has five attempts at a transfer and should time out after a set time period. Ask a user to check when the last successful transfer was. One last thing, is it possible the transfer is completing, and a user is coming in first thing and manually triggering a new full transfer, or is it the task just running non-stop? Edit: Another thing I thought of, make sure Discover is on the same version as SIMS. If they mismatch, the data transfer will break. I've seen a case once where the task just runs and runs and runs. Edited May 21, 2013 by Rawns
mrbios Posted May 21, 2013 Author Posted May 21, 2013 (edited) If you'd like to raise a case we will investigate - there is no way this task should be lasting 10 hours. The user who requested sims discover recently raised a case which came up with a few recommendations for fixing an issue she was having. One of them was to up the time out values, first of all they suggested 600, then when that failed they told us to try 500000 which at present it still is (we only set that on friday, but we've had this issue for longer than that). The original problem she was seeing was that she'd get "Transfer failed" in her transfer status page every day. I still need to run patch 14265 though, waiting for an apropriate time when patching won't interrupt staff. Like Phil says, the task should not take 10 hours, however I have seen the task cause high CPU loads which I think is normal, hence why the task is set to run at 1am, and why it's recommended users don't run full transfers manually during the day. I found in a couple of sites that the Discover log file had sometimes grown to crazy sizes which seems to cause the transfer task to run longer then it should. Check both the Discover.ldf and SIMS.ldf files and if necessary, truncate them and release free space to get them down in size. The transfer may also be failing and depending on your time-out period, it is retrying through to 11am. I think it has five attempts at a transfer and should time out after a set time period. Ask a user to check when the last successful transfer was. One last thing, is it possible the transfer is completing, and a user is coming in first thing and manually triggering a new full transfer, or is it the task just running non-stop? Edit: Another thing I thought of, make sure Discover is on the same version as SIMS. If they mismatch, the data transfer will break. I've seen a case once where the task just runs and runs and runs. Both sims and discover are on the spring update and the user in question doesn't start work until gone 9AM so it's definitelyn ot that she's starting a new transfer. Also i've made sure to shrink all the ldfs, they're nice and tiny Edited May 21, 2013 by mrbios
Rawns Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 (edited) The user who requested sims discover recently raised a case which came up with a few recommendations for fixing an issue she was having. One of them was to up the time out values, first of all they suggested 600, then when that failed they told us to try 500000 which at present it still is (we only set that on friday, but we've had this issue for longer than that). The original problem she was seeing was that she'd get "Transfer failed" in her transfer status page every day. I still need to run patch 14265 though, waiting for an apropriate time when patching won't interrupt staff. 500000?!?!?!?!? That's 8333 minutes!!!! 138 hours!!! 5.75 Days!!! No wonder it's not stopping with that sized timeout!!!! I'd get that changed immediately! 600 (10 mins) is the default I believe. I usually up it to 20 minutes (1200) in bigger schools, and I've set it to 30 (1800) minutes in our biggest school (they have a 10Gb SIMS DB). The transfer should take no more than 30 minutes max. Edited May 21, 2013 by Rawns
mrbios Posted May 21, 2013 Author Posted May 21, 2013 500000?!?!?!?!? That's 8333 minutes!!!! 138 hours!!! No wonder it's not stopping!!!! I'd get that changed immediately! 600 (10 mins) is the default I believe. I usually up it to 20 minutes (1200) in bigger schools, and I've set it to 30 (1800) minutes in our biggest school (they have a 10Gb SIMS DB). The transfer should take no more than 30 minutes max. Well it was someone at capita that recommended we try that figure, must admit i did raise an eyebrow when they recommended it . What's interesting though that even with that figure essentially telling it to never time out, it's taking it 10 hours to finish a data transfer!? Our SIMS DB is 6-7Gb so i'll probably go for 20 or 30 minutes as my final figure.
Rawns Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 Well it was someone at capita that recommended we try that figure, must admit i did raise an eyebrow when they recommended it . What's interesting though that even with that figure essentially telling it to never time out, it's taking it 10 hours to finish a data transfer!? Our SIMS DB is 6-7Gb so i'll probably go for 20 or 30 minutes as my final figure. So the transfer task is stopping at 11am of it's own accord, or are you killing it off? Also, does Discover show the last data transfer was a success? You can check in the Discover client or the Discover Configuration Utility.
mrbios Posted May 21, 2013 Author Posted May 21, 2013 So the transfer task is stopping at 11am of it's own accord, or are you killing it off? Also, does Discover show the last data transfer was a success? You can check in the Discover client or the Discover Configuration Utility. This morning i killed it off but yesterday it stopped of its own accord somewhere between 11am and 12noon. Then CPU load was nice and low from then until 4pm, then at pretty much nothing from 4pm - 1am (during that period the only thing that happens is some backups) then again 1AM it shot up http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/3924/discovergraph.png sorry about the imageshack link but the forum attachment manager won't let me upload things and imgur won't either, maybe the both don't like IE10? meh
Rawns Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 (edited) OK, either way, the task should not take 10 hours. I'd suggest checking Discover to see if it reports that the transfer has completed successfully, and if not, when the last successful transfer was. Log into Discover on the server (you should be able to use your SIMS .net user name/password) and click on the (i) icon in the top right hand corner. It will tell you when the last successful transfer was: Next, reindex patch when possible. Also, dig out the Discover log file (which should be here if you have a standard installation: C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Local\Discover) and if it is failing, it should list some specific errors as to why. They may not mean much but SupportNet solution search seems to have the majority of them listed. Edited May 21, 2013 by Rawns 1
Cache Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 We had a problem where the transfer was taking hours and hours to timeout too, it happend after the Autumn upgrade I think. Running the reindex patch brought the transfer back down to 5 - 10 minutes, so well worth applying that. 1
mrbios Posted May 21, 2013 Author Posted May 21, 2013 Thanks chaps, Will report back once i've run that patch then
zag Posted May 21, 2013 Posted May 21, 2013 Poor design decision in my opinion to run Discover on a separate database that needs syncing. I don't see why the Sims Database can't be made efficient enough to hold all the data.
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