Process Recycles
Process Recycles
This topic discusses process recycles in Speech Engine Services (SES) and Telephony Application Services (TAS).
A process recycle shifts the responsibility for processing calls from one process to another. The new process takes new calls and the old process finishes processing existing calls before finishing. Thus, process recycles are invisible to users.
There are two triggers for process recycles: scheduled and unscheduled. Only TAS employs a daily scheduled process recycle (at midnight, by default). Unscheduled recycles can be triggered for both SES and TAS, and occur when a process reaches its memory limit.
Errors are recorded in the Event Log for unscheduled process recycles and should be addressed by the administrator as needed.
Speech Engine Services
Because application resources, such as prompt databases and grammar files, are loaded into SES engine instances, a SES process can require several minutes to start. To prevent the user from experiencing this wait time, SES continually runs two worker processes: an active process and an idle process. The idle process is ready to take over should the active process need to recycle (because it has either reached its memory limit or has detected an internal problem). You can identify an active process from an idle process by checking its priority level in Windows Task Manager. The idle process always runs in BelowNormal priority. (For instructions on how to view priority levels in Windows Task Manager, see the "Remarks" section.)
For more information about SES recycles, see:
Telephony Application Services
In TAS, recycles occur every 24 hours at midnight, by default. Because a TAS process is not encumbered with large application resources, it starts quickly and does not require a failover configuration (idle process) as does a SES process.
You can change the scheduled time through the Telephony Services Optimization page in the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for Microsoft Speech Server (MSS). For instructions on running MMC, see MMC Administration Overview.
For more information about TAS recycles, see:
Remarks
To view priority levels in Windows Task Manager, right-click the Task Bar at the bottom of your screen, click Task Manager, and then click the Processes tab. On the View menu, click Select Columns, select Base Priority, and then click OK. Locate the two SESWorker.exe entries in the Image Name column and notice their priority levels in the Base Pri column. The idle process always runs in BelowNormal priority.