topic Re: Kill a VA process in Administration and Deployment

Kill a VA process

tammy_dezilva — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 01:11:14 GMT

I am wanting to find out how to kill a VA process. I know for E-guide you can kill a user session via Management Console but when how can I do the same for a VA process? I was able to do it via Task Manager on the server but am hoping there is a nicer way of doing this like for e-guide.

The user had run a crazy query which was then utilising 99% CPU on the server and didn't know how to stop it. He closed the browser but this obviously didn't kill the SAS process.

thanks

Tammy

Re: Kill a VA process

JuanS_OCS — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 08:56:08 GMT

Hello @tammy_dezilva,

good question!

Did your user scheduled the query? If it is scheduled: If you want to kill just the query, it should be enough just by:

Linux: "ps -ef | grep '(name_of_your_query)' ", then get the PID, and "kill -9 (PID)"
Windows: look into task manager for a process with the path as $SASCONFIG\SchedulingServer\(name_of_query), then you can kill it.

If it is not scheduled, it is a bit harder, probably it would be much easier to just kill the LASR server where the query is running (I understand you know how to kill/stop a LASR server), start LASR, and reload all the data. There are other ways, but more tricky ones.

Re: Kill a VA process

tammy_dezilva — Wed, 05 Apr 2017 00:41:56 GMT

Hi @JuanS_OCS

It wasn't a scheduled process unfortunately.

Restarting the LASR server isn't desirable as all the users connected will be impacted as well then.

Re: Kill a VA process

JuanS_OCS — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:19:13 GMT

Hi @tammy_dezilva, if it is not an scheduled query, what is it? Additional details might help.

Re: Kill a VA process

tammy_dezilva — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 22:20:04 GMT

Perhaps I should mention that we're using VA 7.1

The user went to "Create Data Query", built his query and then ran it. It wasn't scheduled to run at a later point in time.

Re: Kill a VA process

JuanS_OCS — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 08:12:56 GMT

Hello again @tammy_dezilva,

Could you please check your SAS Workspace Server metadata definitions? It would be interesting to know if your Workspace server is authenticating with Host authentication or SAS Token Authentication.

If it is a Host Authentication, you should be able to see a SAS process in the server on the name of the user who started the query, then you can kill it. Otherwise, all the users will launch SAS process on the SAS Token account (lasradm or sassrv, generally), and in that case it could be a bit harder for you to trace what session you need to kill.

Re: Kill a VA process

tammy_dezilva — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 21:58:09 GMT

Hi @JuanS_OCS

It's host authentication so that doesn't make sense then?

Re: Kill a VA process

AndrewHowell — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 23:59:10 GMT

Whilst restarting a LASR server is considered a last-resort option, it does highlight the benefit of having more LASR servers - each specifically tasked, such as:

Operational tasks & associated LASR libraries
Discovery tasks & associated LASR libraries
Autoload tasks & associated LASR libraries
.. and these can be broken down even more by team, department, etc.

Plus the table limit you can set is server-based, not library- or table-based, so that's another way to ensure one server does not overwhelm your VA platform, and (if necessary) lets you restart one LASR server without upsetting users on the other LASR servers. See page 83 of the VA 7.1 Admin Guide or page 100 of the VA 7.3 Admin Guide.

Re: Kill a VA process

tammy_dezilva — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 03:09:51 GMT

HI @AndrewHowell

Yep we do have some team LASR servers, but it's the same problem - it would the impact more than one person that is connected to that LASR. Although the impact would be less than if they were running it on the public LASR.