Why does the SMTP process not release memory?

Question

The SMTP process on my server is using a lot of memory, the amount of memory used increases daily. To free the memory up I have to stop and restart the SMTP process.

It seem smtp does not release memory again once it has been assigned.

Answer

When SMTP is in use it will allocate all the memory that it requires. Once allocated this memory is not released again for efficiency reasons, i.e. the fact that the memory was required once means it is likely to be required again, retaining the memory means that it does not have to be allocated to the smtp process again.

So in normal usage of SMTP you should initially see the memory usage rise then level out once it reaches its required level.

If you are seeing the memory continue to increase then please enable full logging for the SMTP process from Logs > Transaction Levels and then stop and restart the service. Once the memory rises send a copy of the relevant SMTP log along with a copy of your system recovery file (setup.txt) and an indication of when the memory started to rise along to support@gordano.com and one of our support engineers will take a look for you.

See Also:

• I am seeing a gradual increase in memory usage

Keywords:SMTP process memory