Description

The article describes how to collect a memory dump of a process that is run inside a Sitecore Managed Cloud container in a non-production environment.

Note: To collect a memory dump in a production environment, contact Sitecore Support.

Solution

Notes:

• Collecting a memory dump might impact the pod and its availability.
• You must check that the free space on Submit Queue persistent storage is sufficient for copying the dump file.

To collect a memory dump:

1. Download the Sysinternals Suite for Nano Server found on the following page and then unpack the archive to your local folder:
   https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/sysinternals-suite
   For example, unpack it to C:\ProcDump
   
   
2. Copy the procdump64.exe tool to the Sitecore Managed Cloud container (see How to copy files to/from a container)
   Change the directory to your local folder, for instance to:

   cd C:\ProcDump

   Copy the binary file to your pod, for example:

   kubectl.exe cp procdump64.exe sitecore/cd-76495d74d-x5bmn:procdump64.exe

3. Connect to your Sitecore pod by running the following commands:

   kubectl exec -it "pod_name" -n "namespace" -- powershell

   For example:

   kubectl.exe exec -it cd-76495d74d-x5bmn -n sitecore -- powershell

4. Run a PowerShell session within the container (see How to run PowerShell in container) and run the following command to find the required ID of the process:

   (Get-Process | where -Property ProcessName -eq "w3wp").id

5. Execute procdump as the Sitecore Support engineer has instructed you to do, with on-demand or conditional collection of it:

   .\procdump64.exe -ma <w3wp PID> -accepteula

   For example:

   \procdump64.exe -ma 5688 -accepteula
   \procdump64.exe -ma 5688 -accepteula -c 80 -s 5

6. After a successful dump collection, exit from the PowerShell session inside the container.
7. Download the collected dump from the container to the local file system:
   • Move the dump file to C:\inetpub\wwwroot\App_Data\Submit Queue:

     Copy-Item -Path .\w3wp.exe_221202_143040.dmp -Destination '.\App_Data\Submit Queue\'

   • Go to the customer's resource group which ends with aks (for instance, mcca8clf4hbkd1cgvi8aks).
   • Go to file shares. There should be only one file share. If there is more than one, check each of them. The dump should be in the root catalog:
     
   • Download the .dmp file and delete it immediately afterward.
8. Zip the dump and upload the zipped archive file to Sitecore Support SharePoint Storage.