FIX: BizTalk Server May Use All Available System Memory (292599)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002
This article was previously published under Q292599

SYMPTOMS

BizTalk Server may try to use up all available system memory when it is processing a large number of large documents.

CAUSE

The current design of BizTalk causes the system to run out of memory.

RESOLUTION


Service Pack Information

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

815781 How to Obtain the Latest BizTalk Server 2002 Service Pack

Hotfix Information


A supported fix is now available from Microsoft, but it is only intended to correct the problem that is described in this article. Apply it only to computers that are experiencing this specific problem. This fix may receive additional testing. Therefore, if you are not severely affected by this problem, Microsoft recommends that you wait for the next version of BizTalk Server that contains this hotfix.

To resolve this problem immediately, contact Microsoft Product Support Services to obtain the fix. For a complete list of Microsoft Product Support Services phone numbers and information about support costs, visit the following Microsoft Web site:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;EN-US;CNTACTMS

NOTE: In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The typical support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question.

The English version of this fix has the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel. 
   Date         Time   Version     Size     File name
   --------------------------------------------------------------
   24-Jun-2002  22:35  3.0.1524.0   53,520  Btsshim.dll      
   12-Jul-2002  22:25  3.0.1524.0  131,344  Cisapi.dll       
   12-Jul-2002  22:25  3.0.1524.0  524,560  Ciscore.dll      
   12-Jul-2002  22:25  3.0.1524.0  405,776  Cisengine.dll    
   12-Jul-2002  22:25  3.0.1524.0  348,432  Mscis.exe        
   11-Apr-2002  16:41               19,632  Sq_priorityupgrade.sql
   11-Apr-2002  16:41               13,680  Btm_priorityupgrade.sql
NOTES
  • For each computer that is running BizTalk Server and for each database group, Btm_priorityupgrade.sql must be executed against the BizTalk InterchangeBTM database, and Sq_priorityupgrade.sql must be executed against the BizTalk InterchangeSQ database. To do this, you must use the SQL Query Analyzer to execute the stored procedures against the affected BizTalk databases.
  • This fix also includes the fix for Q319450 and this functionality can be obtained by reading Q319450. This fix must include these installation steps because the schema change that was made for Q319450 is also present in this fix.For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

    319450 INFO: BizTalk Priority-Based Message Processing Improvement

After you apply this fix, you can use the following registry value to control the batch size that BizTalk Server worker threads use. Reducing the batch size reduces the memory used by BizTalk Server.

Add the DWORD value of MaxReceiveBatchByteSize under the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BTSSvc

The batch size is measured in kilobytes (KB). By default, the size is 1000 KB.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.
This problem was first corrected in Microsoft BizTalk Server 2002 Service Pack 1.

MORE INFORMATION

By design in BizTalk Server, a receive worker thread is responsible for pulling a message into the messaging engine. The size of the message is frequently doubled when the message is converted to UNICODE. By default, these messages are then batched in groups of 20, and another worker thread processes the batch. The number of receive worker threads is based on the number of processors and the BizTalk Server settings.

This issue was first identified on an eight-processor system with 4 GB of memory. In this case, a BizTalk Server was configured to deliver messages directly to a channel, and the channel converted the message from schema A to schema B. The channel ended in a port that wrote the messages to the file system.

By default, in the case where a system has eight processors installed, BizTalk Server uses four worker threads per processor. If the converted UNICODE message is 2 MB in size and the BizTalk Server demand is such that all of the receive worker threads are being used, the memory requirements are 1.28 GB (that is, the number of threads times the number of processors is multiplied by the batch size times the size of the message, or 32 x 40) to process these messages. This does not include the working memory for the process, the memory requirements for MSXML, the required memory for COM, the required memory for the MDAC components, or the memory requirements for any additional COM components that are loaded in the BizTalk memory space.

When the memory failures were examined, it was noted that the memory failures were frequently not related to BizTalk. The Event log was full of memory-related failures, and these failures occurred because the various memory allocators failed when a virtual allocation request was made. The process returns C0000017, which resolves to STATUS_NO_MEMORY.

Modification Type:MinorLast Reviewed:10/6/2005
Keywords:kbHotfixServer kbQFE kbBizTalk2002SP1fix kbbug kbfix KB292599
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