Who is this article for?

IT Administrators experiencing server CPU issues.

IT Administrator access is required.

This article explains how to effectively troubleshoot server CPU issues.

1. Issue

Where a system is running slowly, one possible factor is high CPU utilisation on the server. It is normal for a server CPU activity to spike, which is to say that it hits a high value for a short period of time.

However, sustained very high utilisation over a longer period will usually cause performance issues because the server is not able to process requests quickly enough.

Windows Task Manager will show the current state of the CPU and allow you to see all running processes, sorted by CPU utilisation.

This will show whether a particular process is dominating the server, and once that is identified, the process itself can be investigated.

1.1. Known issues

There are some common causes for very high CPU activity in Internal Audit.

At the application server, Pentana Server Robot process (Pentana.Tng.ServerRobot.RobotService.exe) can get into a state where it repeatedly retries a job. This can sometimes indicate a configuration issue, so the Robot service log and configuration should be reviewed.

2. Solution

To resolve the Robot-specific issue, restart the Robot service.

Additionally, at the database server:

• Hosted Ideagen servers with large databases can sometimes hit a performance limit during backup operations, and while no single process causes a high CPU load there are many instances of Universal Command Line Environment running, and in combination they cause the high load.  Such cases are escalated to our Cloud Operations team for resolution
• If the cause for high CPU utilisation is SQL Server itself, this could indicate out of date statistics or missing indexes, and further troubleshooting is required.

Further reading

• Guidance for troubleshooting high CPU usage - Windows Server | Microsoft Learn