GC Not Running Often Enough on IIS 7 Application - Windows Server 2008

Question

I have a web application that is eventually running out of memory when it runs on IIS 7 Windows Server 2008. When I attempt to run a memory profiler against the application to determine the leak, it is not reproducible on my development workstation...Windows Vista.

The GC collection cycles are not consistent between the server and the workstation and it appears the server's collection is not reclaiming all of its memory and is eventually running out. The server becomes non responsive and throws out of memory exceptions.

We have tried setting objects that are surviving too many generations to null...Some improvement was noticed.

Any assistance/recommendations would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

Tess Ferrandez's blog has some great information on debugging memory leaks using Windbg.

By taking a dump of the running application and then analysing it in Windbg, you should be able to find the source of the leaks you are seeing.

The following entries are probably a good starting point:

1. Setup (including links to configuring Windbg
2. Memory Leak Lab 1
3. Memory Leak Lab 2

Good luck!