Overview

The Exinda can schedule multiple reports to be run at once. These reports are run at 0100, based on the schedule assigned for them (daily, weekly, monthly, etc). When these reports are generated, the internal 'admin' user logs in to start the process to generate the reports so that they can be emailed out. This consists of starting the report, collecting the data from the database, formatting and then emailing the report.

When it emails the report, the report generation tool reports that it is now finished the scheduled report. However, if the Exinda gets busy or is stuck processing, it is possible that the 'finished' information never gets recorded, and as a result, the system will retry generating the report. It is possible to see multiple copies of the report emailed out if the Exinda is continually busy. This article provides a resolution for this error.

Root Cause

When an Exinda is busy, processing power is allocated with priority to the processing of packets (as to not slow down the traffic). As a result, all secondary functions (report generation, UI operation, etc) take what they are given but will not take precedence. If there is no processing power to give to these tasks, they will hang, be slow and otherwise time out, including report generation. So it can happen that even though the report was finally generated, the message saying that it was finished did not register before it timed out and the device was never aware that it finished and emailed out the report again.

Resolution

Ensure that the device is not under load, or that the CPU and RAM usage is not high or elevated. If it is, reboot the box when convenient. And if the problem persists after the box is rebooted, contact Exinda TAC to look into why the appliance's performance is diminished.