Pending Session due to License limit

[Alexsandro_Jose]

Hello team,

We're facing an issue in one of our Blue Prism environment databases, which we have 21 license available, and something around 30 machines (resourcePC). And lately we are facing one of those resource with several pending sessions which can not be deleted, with error ("Failed to delete session on <RESOURCE PC> - Reply was 'MISSING RUNNER'").

And we can only get rid with those pending sessions after restarting our SQL Server. Than the database and sessions start working normally.

I "think" because at some point from those 30 machines, 22 are try to run at the same time, and then cause the session to be as pending, waiting for a license available.

Does anyone know, or have any idea on how to prevent this to happen. Any script, or setup on scheduler or blueprism settings?

Notice that we already have the utility "Pending Session Starter" running on the environment, but seems that those pending session are not being triggered by this robot/agent.

[steven.boggs]

Hi Alexsandro,

We have some documentation in our Knowledge Base that contains some troubleshooting steps for when this scenario and the "MISSING RUNNER" error is encountered here: http://portal.blueprism.com/customer-support/support-center#/path/1140187042

Could you try these three suggested methods and let us know the results as a first step?

[Alexsandro_Jose]

Hello @steven.boggs, thanks for replying. Yes I saw this documentation before opened this topic here. I've tried it, and the doc helped fix the issue "after" it happened, which is get rid with the pending sessions.

My issue is that in the last days, this issue happened twice already,  and I want to "prevent" it to happen. Because the first day it happened, I used this doc to fix the issue, next day it happened again.​

[steven.boggs]

Thanks for confirming you've taken the troubleshooting steps once these errors occur. 

To prevent these errors from occurring in the first place, as you state these sessions are likely being put into Pending due to concurrent license usage limits, this may require analysis of license utilization data to determine if you should either A) re-arrange the scheduler start times to allow for scheduled tasks to complete before starting new ones, or B) discuss potentially purchasing more licenses with your Account Manager.

To determine how many concurrent sessions are in use in an environment at a given time (i.e. when you start seeing these sessions placed into Pending status, or at a regular interval when this scenario begins to occur), you can review the following SQL query with your DBA:
-----
SELECT 
       [sessionnumber]
      ,[processname]
      ,[runningresourcename]
      ,[starterusername]
      ,S.description as "status"
      ,[startdatetime]
  FROM [BPVSessionInfo] VSI
  INNER JOIN [BPAStatus] S ON VSI.statusid = S.statusid
  WHERE     
      S.statusid in (0, 1, 7)
  ORDER BY sessionnumber desc
-----

We have a few other example SQL scripts we that could provide on request via a Support ticket that can check historical license utilization over time and check for concurrent sessions which are not completed. I believe there are also a few "utilization"-related Assets (scripts, VBOs, etc.) available in the Digital Exchange which can help with determining concurrent sessions/license utilization you could look into. 

If you determine you're indeed hitting a session limit with your current license that is causing these issues, upgrading the session count on your license by working with your Account Manager would be our primary recommendation to prevent this scenario going forward. Failing that, it may require some creative re-arranging of scheduled tasks to work within the session limits of your current license.