AeXSVC.exe service crash due to IT Analytics Synchronize Security Roles Task trying to pull AD security groups with circular reference.

Products

• IT Analytics

Issue/Introduction

Altiris Service terminates in regular matter.

Reproducible on both 7.5 and 7.6

The application logs will show application errors at regular intervals per day.
Faulting application name: AeXSVC.exe 
Faulting module name: mswsock.dll

The NS logs shows the following around the same period of time:
Service 'AeXSvc' restart required.

Cause

Circular reference was discovered in the Active Directory structures.
One of the AD groups being synchronized called OU\GroupA. As a member of this group was OU\GroupB. Upon examination of the OU\GroupB in AD it was found that it contained the group OU\GroupA. Thus when the sync task was running it got into an infinite loop and eventually crashed the process.

Resolution

Once this circular reference was removed from the AD environment the task functioned without issue. 

To check is this is the cause, disable the following schedule (if it is enabled):
'Default Synchronize Security Roles Task' - can be disabled under Settings>All Settings>Notification Server>IT Analytics Settings>Cubes. Go to the Security tab and uncheck 'Enabled'. Save changes.