Sharepoint 2013 High CPU and memory utilization killing my server.
I found that my poor SharePoint server was being hammered, well more like being indecently assaulted and then murdered as soon as I enable Search.
And hey, if it doesn’t work at least you can keep on reading my fantastic blog. Normally I don’t read manuals and such as I often believe that I know everything, which in most cases might have some truth, however after some serious performance issues I decided to dive into the Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013 as outlined my Microsoft. This is a small extract, and the bit I am interested in: Installation ScenarioDeployment type and scaleRAMProcessor
Single server with a built-in database or single server that uses SQL Server
Development or evaluation installation of SharePoint Server 2013 or SharePoint Foundation 2013 with the minimum recommended services for development environments. For information, see Minimum recommended services for development environments.
8 GB
64-bit, 4 cores
Single server with a built-in database or single server that uses SQL Server
Development or evaluation installation of SharePoint Server 2013 or SharePoint Foundation 2013 running Visual Studio 2012 and the minimum recommended services for development environments. For information, see Minimum recommended services for development environments.
10 GB
64-bit, 4 cores
Single server with a built-in database or single server that uses SQL Server
Development or evaluation installation of SharePoint Server 2013 running all available services.
24 GB
64-bit, 4 cores
Web server or application server in a three-tier farm
Pilot, user acceptance test, or production deployment of SharePoint Server 2013 or SharePoint Foundation 2013.
12 GB
64-bit, 4 cores
As an avid avoider of multiple licenses I want to run everything on this VM. This includes PowerPivot, SQL, Search.. and basically every tickable option. You will notice the 3rd option listed here “Development or evaluation installation of SharePoint Server 2013 running all available services.”, this sounds about right. Notice the RAM requirements, 24GB suggested. Although that is not really a lot, I was running only 8GB. What are the effects of running too little RAM? Well you have constant high CPU and needless to say RAM utilization, but so what, right, it will just be slow.. not really. Here is a snapshot of my Taskmgr
Robert Neilson gives a nice breakdown of the Search Architecture if you want to know how the insides work. Understanding SharePoint 2013 Search Component Architecture
There is also SQL Server 2012 with 2 instances and SSAS somewhere in the mix, but it does not seem to be the major chomper of memory. The problem comes in at any scenario where you have less than 5% available RAM. Most of the SharePoint 2013 applications moan about this and do not complete their required tasks, which keeps hitting the server to request more RAM and constantly waits for available RAM, this is a bad space to be in. I was noticing constant high SQL utilization, especially on the POWERPIVOT instance for SQL, even though there was nothing happening there. Even SQL traces and top counters could not shed any light on why SQL was hitting the CPU. And I mean it really nailed the CPU, a PowerView report took 9 times longer to refresh, if it did. Less than 5% RAM means SSAS will not work. We have scaled up the RAM to 10GB and the server runs like a charm. Your mileage may vary, but I would think that for all services and everything you need to come in at around 10GB RAM and about 4 IIS application pools for your services and you should be okay. This server only handles about 9 users working on PowerView and 3 Access 2010 web applications and I am sure it will do pretty well with another 50 or so, but after that we will scale out our Search to a new application server. There are other topology considerations Topologies for SharePoint 2013, thanks Microsoft, but there are budget considerations as well. And even though SharePoint 2013 comes in a lot lighter in terms of licensing, if we had an endless budget I would have my PA typing this for me and consultants to handle my daily SharePoint concerns. Adrian.