COM+ application recycling

  • Article

Clarifying answers to some questions.

-is there any know issues with application recycling, especially on memory limit?

 

General Information

================

Application recycling works by creating a duplicate of the Dllhost process associated with an application. This duplicate Dllhost process services all future object requests, which leaves the old Dllhost to finish servicing the remaining object requests. The old Dllhost process is shut down when it detects the release of all external references to objects in the process or when the expiration time-out value is reached. Through this behavior, application recycling ensures that a client application does not experience a service interruption.

On memory limit

=============

RecycleMemoryLimit - The maximum amount of process memory usage (in kilobytes) before recycling the process. If the process memory usage exceeds the specified number for longer than one minute, the process is recycled. The valid range is 0 through 1,048,576 KB. The default amount of memory usage is 0 KB, which indicates that the process will not recycle from reaching a memory limit.

Known Issues

==========

1. You cannot recycle a COM+ application that has been configured to run as a Windows service.

2. Memory Limit indicates the maximum amount of process memory usage (in kilobytes) before recycling the process. If the process's memory usage exceeds the specified number for longer than one minute, the process is recycled. The valid range is 0 through 1,048,576 KB, and the default amount of memory usage is 0 KB.

 

-is it recommended or not to use this feature?

 

Application recycling significantly increases the overall stability of your applications. Because the performance of most applications can degrade over time due to factors such as memory leaks, reliance on third-party code, and non-scalable resource usage, COM+ application recycling provides a simple solution to gracefully shut down a process associated with an application and restart it. So it is a recommended feature.

 

-the memory limit, is it based on the COM+ process private bytes or other?

 process memory usage (in kilobytes)

 

More Info and reference:

msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms685957(v=vs.85).aspx