PRB: CLB Clients May Be Slow to Respond After a COM+ Application Server Stops Responding (820448)

SYMPTOMS

After a COM+ application server stops responding, some Component Load Balancing (CLB) clients may not respond for about 40 seconds.

CAUSE

CLB detects a COM+ application server that is not responding when CLB polls for response times (by default, every 800milliseconds). If any COM+ component activation request comes in after the server stops responding and before the next CLB poll, the CLB routers continue to send object activation requests to the unresponsive server. The COM+ client thread waits until DCOM times out (by default, after about 40 seconds) before the object creation request is considered unsuccessful and the thread continues. Depending on the client program design, this may make the application appear to be unresponsive until DCOM times out.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem:

Design your applications to handle user input on threads that are different from those threads that create remote COM+ objects.
Try to create an object again after an unsuccessful attempt.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.