Troubleshooting a slow Lotus Domino Server

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View member feedback to this Ask the Expert Q&A.

You definitely have a problem. Domino should run for 100+ days with no errors at all. You need to use some of the analysis tools built into the Domino Admin console, or within Win2000 to see what is happening. I suspect a memory leak.

Start by shutting down every server task that is non-essential and removing every third-party product from the Domino box. If that helps, you have found (or narrowed down) the source of the problem.

MEMBER FEEDBACK TO THIS ASK THE EXPERT Q&A:

I have experienced the same issue and each time it was replication of a large database. If you have a database with lots (1 million+) of documents in it, then Domino 'seems' to have to generate a list of every document in the database when it replicates, eventually both Domino and the windows on the server stop responding, as if the server has run out of resources. We fixed this by having the ini setting restrict the percentage of available resources that Domino may use. This allows Domino and the TCIP stack to respond, but does not fix the underlying issue of replication of large databases.

Also (just to check the simple stuff) check that your Quick edit and Insert mode are deselected, as although the server seems to be okay, clicking in the server window pauses the console, and eventually, bit by bit, Domino stops responding.

—Brian S.

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We have a similar issue with Domino 6.5.3 on WIndows NT 4.0 and one on Windows 2003. If you normally keep the Domino window maximized, it leaks memory. Pull up Task Manager and look at the amount of memory being used. Now minimize Domino and watch the amount of memory drop, sometimes by hundreds of MBs. If we maximize and minimize the Domino window every morning (and keep it minimized), we seem to have a lot less issues with the server being sluggish than if we left it alone. We now only reboot the server once a month. However, we'll be going to 6.5.4 soon, and I'm not sure if this will correct the problem.

Overall, this seems to be a bigger problem on our hub than on the mail server, although the hub does have more processes running, such as a virus scanner. The memory leak is definitely there.

—Harold G.

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The suggestion by Brian S. will solve the problem mentioned by Harold G.

—Doug J.

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The problem mentioned by Harold G. has been reported regarding other applications too: http://www.intellexcorp.com/4DMessages/2400/2422.html. Thus, it seems to be not a problem of Domino at all, but perhaps a problem of the Windows Task Manager reporting wrong values in the Mem Usage column of the Processes window. The drop of memory usage after minimizing the application should be also reflected in the Performance window of the Task Manager, but it doesn't.

—Dietmar D.

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That's why we always use Windows Services to launch Lotus and the parameters -jc and -c to have a console.

—F. Maisonneuve

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