Andrew Calvett's SQL Server Blog

I recently came across a bug in Windows 2003 SP2 which causes a blue screen of death and SSAS was exposing the bug. In my scenario SSAS was the match, a file system cache function was the fuse and a BSOD the payload…..  If your an all Windows 2008 shop then there is no need to read on and i am envious

One of the configurations i always set on a SSAS server is LimitFileSystemCache and one reason is that if you do not it can grow to the point where it has a negative impact on SSAS. When you set this configuration SSAS will use the API functions “GetSystemFileCacheSize” and “SetSystemFileCacheSize” and this is where the problem lies.

When SSAS starts for the first time it will set the file system cache and your server will be fine until you have to stop and then start the SSAS service without rebooting the server. The problem lies in the fact that when SSAS stops the operating system cleans up the memory in relation to the file system cache and a structure is not reset and as soon as its accessed it causes the blue screen. The article and hotfix for this problem is KB979128.

So, if you have PreAllocated your SSAS memory which is something i often do then your quite likely to get the blue screen when SSAS starts but you might not as its very hit and miss. I found if i did not get it at startup i would definitely get it when i pushed the server to its limits.

Now should you rush out and apply this patch? Well, its always good to ensure stability but i have been supporting SSAS servers for years and the first time i saw the blue screen was a few months ago in test so you can at least take your time to test the patch before rolling it out……

Its also worth noting that other users of tools that set the file system cache may well experience this problem and i mention this because its not uncommon to limit the file system cache for SQL Database deployments…..

Below is the OS bug check we got when we hit the problem.

Reason Code: 0x805000f
Bugcheck String: 0x0000000a (0x0000000000000028, 0x0000000000000002, 0x0000000000000000, 0xfffff800010e9a8b)