MSSQL Timeouts

[richard]

I am having regular database timeouts on the MSSQL server Cornwall. Is anyone else seeing this? When it happens a call to support will have them restart the MSSQL service but clearly this isnt the answer. Is it possible that a badly behaved website is causing the server to slow down or hang?

[Dan]

Hi,

I'm not sure why this could be happening. State on livechat, support ticket or on the telephone that it's been happening frequently and a restart to the service hasn't resolved it.

Alternatively a system admin or a member of management should respond to this thread accordingly

[James]

I've forwarded your account details to one of our Windows admin and he will post an update in this thread shortly.

[richard]

Further problems

It is happening again - on the SQLConnection.Open it returns
Database error: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding.

Now it would also appear that the ASP worker process is very slow, I have a test page that simply sets the text of an asp:Label without any database activity and this seems to be taking up to 30 seconds to display.
I will raise a support ticket.

[MrTWS]

Hi Richard

What kind of software are you running that needs the database? It may be that the software is not configured accurately, and not opening and closing the connections as and when it should

Just a thought

[richard]

Connection pool

I am sure that the connection handling is working correctly I monitor when the connections are opened and ensure that they are closed after use. At most 2 connections will be open at any one time. On my test server I have never had any problems.

[WH-WinAdmin]

Hello Richard,

SQL service is running fine on Conrwall, we are not facing any issues with it.
I would suggest you to verify your database connection string and make sure you have used Conrwall in place of server/host parameter instead of IP address.
Conrwall is the hostname of this server and is used as Trusted SQL server name.

"connection timeout" is the parameter in Database Connection string which is nothing but the length of time to wait for a connection to the server before terminating the attempt and generating an error. You can increase this timeout value as per the requirement of your web application.
You get "Timeout expired" error message only when the time it took for processing is exceeded than the allocated time.

Your issue has been fixed on live chat itself

I would suggest you to email your issue along with the domain name in case if you face this problem with any other web site so that we can verify the connection string and timeout value you have used.

[richard]

OK - I know for sure it is not my web application that is at fault. Not only do I get timeouts on the web site itself but I am now getting them when attempting to connect to the sqlserver using sql management studio. Error message from sqlwb follows:

Cannot connect to mssql.(domainremoved).org
------------------------------
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: -2)

[WH-WinAdmin]

Hello Richard,

I would admit that there has been a slight problem here and MS SQL server has been behaving a bit strange recently. We have noticed allot of IP brute forcing the SQL server for the "sa" password and that is the reason why SQL remote connections are disabled temporarily.
We have also installed few tools to monitor all the queries on SQL server and prepare a report for it which will helps to find the exact database eating all the resources of the server.

I would like put forward an apology for the same and assure that the server will be back to normal in couple of days.

Thank you for being patient.

[James]

We have found a MSSQL database which was utilizing most of the CPU and Server resources and overloading the server. We have suspended this database, and as a result the server is working absolutely fine. We keep monitoring our servers continuously for such activities. You should not face any performance issues with your domain names now.

[richard]

Great, it seems much quicker and more stable now. Is there no way of throttling individual applications so this cant happen again?

[Administrator]

Great, it seems much quicker and more stable now. Is there no way of throttling individual applications so this cant happen again?

Hi Richard,

I am not sure what else can be done on Cornwall to improve its performance, but we are coming up with a new cluster of 6 high specification windows server hosted on DotNetPanel control panel. This service will be launched within next 3 - 4 days. You are most welcome to request migration to these new cluster within next 10 - 15 days to get better performance and 100% uptime for your website.