Exinda Intermittent Unresponsiveness, Stale/Missing Graphs, and “EXINDA INHIBITED” (ExOS 7.5.7 Memory Growth / ExOS 7.6.3 Collector High CPU)

Solution

Use the sections below to identify which pattern you are seeing (memory growth vs. collector high CPU), capture evidence, apply the appropriate mitigation, and then reduce recurrence by addressing the underlying PPS/connection-churn drivers and (where applicable) applying the recommended patch level.

Symptoms / How to Recognize the Issue

A) Memory growth and eventual management unresponsiveness (ExOS v7.5.7 (0077) pattern)

• WebUI/management access becomes sluggish or unavailable
• Graphs stop updating
• RAM usage climbs day-over-day and can reach 100%
• A single management-plane process may consume several GB (example observed: userd)

B) CPU pegged at ~100% with collectord stalling (ExOS v7.6.3 (0169) pattern)

• CPU rises to ~100% and the appliance becomes slow to manage
• Graphs/real-time monitoring may appear stale or stop updating
• collectord is the top CPU consumer
• Logs may show management daemons waiting on collectord followed by kill/relaunch activity, for example:
  • Async: timed out getting external response ... from collectord-<pid>
  • Failed to kill process collectord ... with SIGTERM, trying SIGKILL next
  • Process collectord (pid <pid>) terminated from signal 9 (SIGKILL)
  • Launched collectord with pid <pid>

Prominent indicators (examples)

• EXINDA INHIBITED
• Async: timed out getting external response ... from collectord-<pid>
• Failed to kill process collectord ... with SIGTERM, trying SIGKILL next
• Process collectord (pid <pid>) terminated from signal 9 (SIGKILL)

Investigation Workflow (Repeatable)

1. Confirm version and platform
   • Record current ExOS version (e.g., 7.5.7 (0077) or 7.6.3 (0169)).
   • Record hardware model (e.g., Exinda 4065).
   • Confirm whether the device is standalone or clustered.
2. Capture evidence during the event window
   • WebUI
     • Monitor > System: RAM Usage, Swap Usage, CPU Usage
     • Monitor > Top Objects: Top Hosts and Top Applications (sort by Connections and Bandwidth for the last 5–15 minutes)
     • Monitor > Service Levels > TCP Health: check Ignored / Refused / Aborted
   • CLI (during spike)

     show processes sort cpu limit 15
     show processes sort memory limit 15

   • Generate a diagnostics bundle during/near the event so logs reflect the current state.

Mitigation: ExOS v7.5.7 (0077) RAM Growth Driven by a Single Process (Example: userd)

Goal: Recover memory headroom quickly and reduce recurrence risk.

1) Short-term mitigation: restart the high-memory management-plane service

If process evidence points to userd (or another single service) as the dominant RAM consumer, use a controlled restart:

en
conf t
service user restart

Then re-check RAM usage in Monitor > System.

2) Longer-term: plan a firmware upgrade

• If the RAM growth behavior started after an upgrade and persists across reboots, move to a newer supported release in a maintenance window using the standard firmware upgrade process.
• After upgrading, monitor RAM for 24–48 hours to confirm the day-over-day growth pattern is resolved.
• There is no reliable “cleanup” command to force a process to release memory if it does not do so; controlled service restarts are a mitigation, and upgrading firmware is the longer-term approach.

Mitigation: ExOS v7.6.3 (0169) collectord High CPU / Monitoring Stalls

Goal: Reduce collector workload and recover quickly when CPU is critical.

1) Enable TCP DDoS ignore (reduces collector overhead; does not block traffic)

en
conf t
ddos tcp ignore

Keep this enabled while investigating recurrent collector CPU saturation.

2) Controlled recovery when CPU is critical

• Restart collector:

  en
  conf t
  service collector restart

• If graphs/real-time monitoring remain stale after restarting collector, restart monitoring:

  en
  conf t
  service monitor restart

3) Reduce recurrence by reducing connection churn / “noise”

• Focus on connections per second / PPS drivers, not only bandwidth.
• Use:
  • Monitor > Top Objects (Top Hosts/Apps sorted by Connections)
  • TCP Health (high Ignored/Refused/Aborted)
• Apply upstream controls where appropriate (firewall/ACL/rate-limit) for top churn sources. In one observed environment, rate-limiting heavy external update traffic reduced impact.

4) Avoid frequent scheduled collector restarts as a steady-state fix

• Scheduling service collector restart every 15 minutes can keep production stable temporarily, but it causes frequent monitoring/reporting resets and gaps and does not address the underlying trigger.
• If you must schedule restarts, use the longest interval that maintains stability while you reduce the root drivers of churn/PPS.

Patch / Upgrade Option for ExOS 7.6.3 Collector Issue

• A patch release ExOS 7.6.3-0176 has been described as addressing collector stability issues in some environments.
• It has been stated to be not model-specific and can be applied to Exinda 4065 as long as the appliance is on the 7.6.3 branch, using the standard firmware upgrade process.
• Important limitation: firmware/patches do not change the appliance’s hardware PPS limits. If PPS/churn remains excessive, collector saturation symptoms may still occur.

Validation (Confirm the Issue Is Mitigated)

• CPU remains consistently below critical thresholds during typical peak periods (Monitor > System > CPU Usage).
• Graphs update normally; real-time monitoring is not stale.
• No repeated log sequence of management timeouts waiting for collectord followed by SIGKILL/relaunch.
• RAM remains stable (if previously affected by memory growth).