Increase in memory utilization on Performance Center post upgrade to r3.7.x releases of Performance Management

Products

• CA Infrastructure Management
• CA Performance Management - Usage and Administration

Issue/Introduction

We found a potential memory leak on Performance Management.

After upgrading to r3.7.x we see a major increase in memory utilization on the Performance Center server.

The server is also showing swapping activity per this sample:

total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:  94G        94G       349M         4K        58M       5.0G

-/+ buffers/cache:  89G       5.3G

Swap:  31G       8.9G        23G

Environment

Performance Management releases r3.7 GA through r3.7.4.

Cause

There is a problem with the performance schema that is enabled by default in the new version of mysql we are using in r3.7.x releases that now use MySql version 5.7.24

Resolution

This is resolved in the r3.7.5 and newer releases per the following note in the Fixed Issues list.

Symptom: After a long period of operation, MySQL process eventually consumes a large percentage of overall system memory even though the process memory settings are properly sized.  This is due to MySQL's performance_schema, which is an in-memory schema and not used for Performance Center, being enabled by default.
Resolution: The MySQL performance_schema has been disabled in the my.cnf file installed with Performance Center.
(3.7.5, DE422458)

To resolve the issue in the current systems we can take the following steps to disable the performance_schema setting.

1. Open the /etc/my.cnf file for editing.
2. Find the [mysqld] section. Within add the following line:
   1. performance_schema = OFF
3. Restart the four Performance Center services and the mysql service. A server reboot would have the same result, restarting the services.

Additional Information

Performance Center and MySql restart instructions can be found here:

• https://ca-broadcom.wolkenservicedesk.com/external/article?articleId=32043

Fixes Issues documentation can be found here:

• https://techdocs.broadcom.com/content/broadcom/techdocs/us/en/ca-enterprise-software/it-operations-management/performance-management/3-7/release-notes/fixed-issues.html