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Inspiring
June 15, 2016
Question

Repeated Active Request Spikes - CF 11 Update 7

  • June 15, 2016
  • 5 replies
  • 1036 views

We've been seeing a pretty severe problem with CF 11 Updater 7 (and now 😎 where the active requests just spike out to our max and the server starts throwing timeouts and 503 errors.

We run a ColdFusion 11 Enterprise server (currently patched with update 6), which handles about 30 requests per second on average.

Periodically, the metrics graphs will just show a spike in active requests that jumps up to our max (100 threads).  This last for about 15-20 seconds and then recovers, but accompanying it are usually 10-20 timeout errors and who knows how many 503's.  And this ends up happening every 15 minutes or so.  It's like something is slowing down the processing of pages, or holding them up for long enough to queue out of control.

We tried installing update 7 and it happened all day, so we rolled back out of it.  When update 8 was released, we installed that and encountered the same problem.  I'm guessing that it was actually in update 7 and the fact that updates are cumulative means I got it again.

Has anyone experienced this before?  Is there any way I can install update 8 without 7?

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    5 replies

    Inspiring
    July 11, 2016

    Do you have sandbox security enabled?  If so, turn it off and see if the problem goes away.

    We recently had severe problems with the DB connection pool hanging when a certain (hard to define) threshold of incoming requests was reached.  CF10 and CF11 both exhibited the behavior.  With sandbox security disabled, the hangs disappeared.  If you must have sandbox security enabled, in the CF admin, try limiting your DSN's connections to, say, 10 max connections.  It seemed to help.

    I've been meaning to submit a bug report on this...

    EddieLotter
    Inspiring
    June 22, 2016

    ColdFusionSmurf wrote:

    Is there any way I can install update 8 without 7?

    Yes, the updates are cumulative. If you apply the currently available update 9, it will include all previous updates.

    Cheers

    Eddie

    Inspiring
    June 22, 2016

    I don't feel like you really understand what I'm asking here, Eddie.  The fact that the updates are cumulative is my problem.

    EddieLotter
    Inspiring
    June 22, 2016

    Really? That's basically what I said, ColdFusionSmurf. The fact that the updates are cumulative means that, no, you cannot apply a later update without effectively applying all previous updates. I'm sorry that's not the answer you wanted to hear, but it remains the answer none-the-less.

    Cheers

    Eddie

    Inspiring
    June 21, 2016

    I think everyone is misunderstanding the problem here...

    1. The active request spike is the symptom, not the issue.  It's pretty clear to see when watching the graphs.  It's like something else is happening to slow down requests for some reason, and everything slows down just enough for the constant requests we get to spike out of control.

    2. We have Fusion Reactor already installed, that's how I'm watching the request graphs.

    3. I may at some point try Update 9, but I'm pretty certain it will only cause the same problems.  I feel pretty confident in saying that Update 7 is the problem here.

    Participating Frequently
    June 21, 2016

    I'd put a trial of fusion reactor on the server which will help you gather further detailed info.

    also hotfix9 is out for cf11... try that first.

    EddieLotter
    Inspiring
    June 16, 2016

    Enable logging on your Web server, and review them after this issue occurs. The logs will allow you to see the IP address of every connection. This might lead you to where the spike in activity is coming from.

    Cheers

    Eddie