loxford01 Posted July 2 Posted July 2 Our Sims server is showing 100% CPU usage with SQL server service. Upon logging with our MIS support they identified Sims service manager is causing the spikes. This has been happenning for the past 2 days so we have disabled the SSM service. They have now logged it with ESS. Is anyone else experienceing similar?
Tefters Posted July 2 Posted July 2 59 minutes ago, loxford01 said: Our Sims server is showing 100% CPU usage with SQL server service. Upon logging with our MIS support they identified Sims service manager is causing the spikes. This has been happenning for the past 2 days so we have disabled the SSM service. They have now logged it with ESS. Is anyone else experienceing similar? This could be due to more significant pushes within SIMS to Nextgen and the greater reliance on SSM for pushing data out via DEX. I noticed this week they have now forced Registers to Nextgen, which my end users are thrilled over. Using Nextgen is not the issue at present its the logging in and shoddy auth which is awful. I'm unable to get the MS integration to work for normal end users, although it works for admins. I'm waiting for the ParentPay Group login front-end change, which is forthcoming. I recently threw a lot of resources at our SIMS server also to stop complaints of performance from a system level so anything from here on in is purely DB indexing: 1
loxford01 Posted July 2 Author Posted July 2 So we have to now re-enable SSM service as our intouch isnt working now. It doesnt resolve the CPU usage spikes though. We've allocated 64GB RAM and similar 70% usage. @SIMS_Customer_Support any support with this as we cant use the behaviour logging module with intouch and if we re-enable SSM service, the server will spike again to 100% usage causing services to crash. Our MIS support has already reached out to you. I have scheduled a server restart later today.
Tefters Posted July 2 Posted July 2 27 minutes ago, loxford01 said: So we have to now re-enable SSM service as our intouch isnt working now. It doesnt resolve the CPU usage spikes though. We've allocated 64GB RAM and similar 70% usage. @SIMS_Customer_Support any support with this as we cant use the behaviour logging module with intouch and if we re-enable SSM service, the server will spike again to 100% usage causing services to crash. Our MIS support has already reached out to you. I have scheduled a server restart later today. Have you tried disabling different services within SSM to see if any particular sub service is causing the issue? 1
loxford01 Posted July 2 Author Posted July 2 I will try that for the suggestion. I'm just waiting for the server restart later today then I can begin to single out services within SSM and see if that works.
Tefters Posted July 2 Posted July 2 (edited) If you're not using SIMS Nextgen disable this one: I would try this before a reboot, personally. Edited July 2 by Tefters 1
JonFromRHS Posted July 2 Posted July 2 are you using the SQL Server Express? From previous experience (now using BromCom) the SQL Server express is limited to a 10GB database as imposed by Microsoft.
loxford01 Posted July 2 Author Posted July 2 I guess that might be the one causing the CPU usage issues. We do use next gen for looking up timetables, or registers in assemblies on tablets but the way things are going with next gen forced changes, it seems like more functions on Sims on prem will auto redirect to next gen. 1
loxford01 Posted July 2 Author Posted July 2 6 minutes ago, JonFromRHS said: are you using the SQL Server Express? From previous experience (now using BromCom) the SQL Server express is limited to a 10GB database as imposed by Microsoft. We use SQL Server 2019 Standard Edition and our database is just under 50GB. Its does need a cleanup with a lot of old stacked up messages. 1
Tefters Posted July 2 Posted July 2 (edited) Yeah, our SIMS server was on the same spec as yours and we were seeing high CPU loads about 6 weeks ago so I just went nuts and assigned a ton more CPU proessors as its a VM and we had a fair few to spare. Edited July 2 by Tefters
loxford01 Posted July 2 Author Posted July 2 So I can now confirm that the Sims Data Exchange service is the culprit, as soon as I turn it off from SSM, CPU usage drops to 5%. I've done similar as you @Tefters and increased number of CPUs to 16 as had some spare as well and with this DEX service on now it maxes to around 55% so a huge drop from 99%. @SIMS_Customer_Support this needs to be fixed.
willtech Posted July 2 Posted July 2 (edited) Careful of adding CPUs, you could fall out of MS SQL licence compliancy depending on your licence. But I agree with you @loxford01 ,@SIMS_Customer_Support this needs sorting out, and quickly. Edited July 2 by willtech 1
loxford01 Posted July 3 Author Posted July 3 12 hours ago, willtech said: Careful of adding CPUs, you could fall out of MS SQL licence compliancy depending on your licence. But I agree with you @loxford01 ,@SIMS_Customer_Support this needs sorting out, and quickly. Absolutely. Its 16 vCPUs across 4 sockets sit safely below Microsoft's limits of 24 cores and 4 sockets under our standard SQL licence. Its a temp measure to stabilise our Sims server whilst @SIMS_Customer_Support investigate or explain why its happenning and provide a solution.
NegativeKillDeath Posted July 3 Posted July 3 We had similar issue with the Data Exchange service. Archiving attendance marks helped us. 1
fraserr100 Posted July 3 Posted July 3 Same issue here. We identified that the CPU spikes were roughly every 40mins and it was the Change Tracking auto-cleanup that was causing the performance issues. SIMS Support pointed me in the direction of this Microsoft article - Troubleshoot change tracking auto cleanup issues - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn - look at the 'High CPU utilization during cleanup' section near the end of the article. It made a difference when we ran it within our test virtual environment, and I'm going to run it tomorrow morning on our live database.
gumbygaz Posted July 3 Posted July 3 Interesting, thanks for highlighting this. We've been struggling with a couple schools - increased RAM allocation to see if that helped and wondered why there's been suddenly a spike SIMS demands but of course NextGen! Why are we still with SIMS... sigh..... I'll have a look at that auto cleanup as well thanks @fraserr100 1
loxford01 Posted July 7 Author Posted July 7 Just an update on this. So far no response from @SIMS_Customer_Support, no response from Sims to our MIS support provider, no solution provided at all. CPU usage still high, memory usage still high and we have a Sims summer upgrade tommorow night so hoping that goes smoothly. Some staff also having issues running reports in Sims with delays. Not good since we are trying to wrap up things for the summer term.
fraserr100 Posted July 7 Posted July 7 I ran the SQL query in this Troubleshoot change tracking auto cleanup issues - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn under the 'High CPU utilisation during clean up' section on Saturday and it made a huge difference. See below. 2
loxford01 Posted July 7 Author Posted July 7 Thanks for this update and looks promising. I dont don't delve into the SQL side of Sims, but have shared this with our MIS support in case this is what needs doing at our end. 8 minutes ago, fraserr100 said: I ran the SQL query in this Troubleshoot change tracking auto cleanup issues - SQL Server | Microsoft Learn under the 'High CPU utilisation during clean up' section on Saturday and it made a huge difference. See below.
loxford01 Posted July 9 Author Posted July 9 Its a bit of a strange one but since deploying the latest Sims Summer upgrade our CPU spikes have now disappeared. Still waiting for our MIS support to carry out any fixes on SQL database as they are still waiting for Sims support to reply back to them on their logged ticket.
loxford01 Posted July 10 Author Posted July 10 (edited) Finally an update from Sims ESS support: Good morning, I can confirm the fix to resolve the performance issues was successfully applied last night. The fix was applied through DeX, so if DeX has been turned off, you will need to turn this on for the patch fix to apply. However, we would recommend turning this back on out of school hours, or at the end of the school day, as this may cause some downtime. On 09/07/2026 at 08:43, loxford01 said: Its a bit of a strange one but since deploying the latest Sims Summer upgrade our CPU spikes have now disappeared. Still waiting for our MIS support to carry out any fixes on SQL database as they are still waiting for Sims support to reply back to them on their logged ticket. Edited July 10 by loxford01
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