Out of Memory but 120Gb RAM!!

[Alan_Rossiter]

Hi all.

Working with a client I run an MRP scenario for all of the 155,000 stock items. The scenario covers 37 weeks and takes into account only 1 warehouse but seeks information using Sales Order, Purchase Order and Production Order to enable the Buyer to make purchases. Running the scenario we get the dreaded "Out of Memory" and SAP B1 stops. I ran this directly on the SQL Server which has 160Gb RAM, 120Gb given exclusively to SQL. Is there any more I can do? The client ran this up to now on SAP B1 2007 with no crashes and a severely struggling SQL Server and is embarrasing to show that the faster version of SAP B1 dies whereas the struggling version has no problem. We can shorten the range of MRP scenario and tighten what we need to review but that's a compromise.

Currently running SAP B1 9.2 PL07, 32-bit version on WIndows Server 2012 R2, SQL 2014 with the specs as previous. Any thoughts would be welcome on assessing this.

Alan.

[Johan_H · Accepted solution]

Hi Alan,

The B1 client has its own built in safeguards to prevent B1 from monopolizing all RAM. In the case of many reports this is an arbitrary static number (that I happen to not know). It is not related to the actual available resources of the machine. Such safeguards have been added more and more, to prevent customers from having to work with "severely struggling SQL Servers", that could otherwise bring all other company activity to a screeching halt ¹.

Assuming that 155.000 items and 37 weeks are not typos, the scenario you describe is absolutely out of B1's client's league. You could test the scenario on a HANA system, as I think B1's HANA versions do not have the same safeguards.

If HANA has the same problems, or if the customer wants to stay with SQL Server, I wholeheartedly recommend building them an addon, to take care of this scenario. An addon would have the added advantage of allowing for query optimization, behind-the-scenes load balancing, and far more advanced business logic, allowing the customer to improve the entire process while they are at it ¹.

Regards,

Johan

P.S. if your company does not have its own developer(s), I can put you in touch with a freelancer.

¹) possible arguments for you to lessen the embarrassment.

[Former Member]

Hi Alan,

I have a similar issue where SAP B1 Client falls over with an out of memory error. We're using the 32 bit client and a lot less products than you mentioned (<8k). Windows 32 bit applications are limited to 3.5GB of RAM, I monitored running MRP with the 32 bit client on a fairly high spec laptop using Task Manager and found it falls over with an out of memory error at 3.4ishGB which leads me to believe it's a 32 bit client memory limitation. We've just been through an upgrade from v9.1 to v9.2 (it was working fine on v9.1 BTW) and to upgrade the client to 64 bit we also need to upgrade our add-ons to 64 bit.

If you have a test environment (assuming you're running 64bit Windows) I'd suggest trying the SAP B1 64 bit client to see how it copes.

BR,

Darren

[Alan_Rossiter]

Thanks Darren. SOrry, only seeing this answer now. We did a stand-alone install of a 64-bit version as you recommended and yes, it worked as expected. It's interesting that the 32-bit version on a 64-bit machine applies the OS limit of 3.4Gb to operate but it's one for the future.

Thanks for taking the time.

Alan.

[Alan_Rossiter]

Thank you Johan...this answers my question as to why the more up to date SAP B1 cannot perform what the older version did. I will discuss with the client to reduce their demands on this scenario and advise them of the reasons why this is now the case. They are currently going through an upgrade which isn't HANA so it might not be advisable to recommend another upgrade while this one isn't finished. 🙂

I appreciate your detailed information.

Alan