Forum Post: RE: Memory Management issuein CRM Client for Outlook UR11 Critical Update

Hi AdrianR,

This message is by design, and to better explain why, I'll do my best to cover how we've changed the design of the client in our most recent update. When the CRM client is first opened with the Critical Update (or Update Rollup 15 and beyond) installed, it spins up two new Microsoft.Crm.Application.Outlook.WebFormsHost.exe processes that host all CRM forms that are opened from within Outlook. The client then begins monitoring these processes for two separate memory thresholds - VirtualMemAvailableWarningThreshold and VirtualMemAvailableErrorThreshold. If you are using the 32-bit client, then the former threshold is set to 614MB by default (or 70% used of the 2GB available) and the latter threshold is set to 204MB by default (or 90% used of the 2GB available).

Based on these two thresholds, the Critical Update monitors for two scenarios:

Grid-to-Form Navigation: When a user opens a form from the grid, the client initially handles it in the first WebFormsHost process. When this first process reaches the 70% memory utilization threshold, the client transparently switches new forms opened from the grid to the second WebFormsHost process. When the second process reaches the 70% memory utilization threshold as well, the "low on memory" message you quoted above is surfaced to the end user.

Form-to-Form Navigation: When a user opens a form from within another opened form (i.e. through Advanced Find or Duplicate Detection), the client handles it in the same process that is handling the form from which it was opened. In this scenario, the client is unable to switch over to the second process even if the original has already hit the 70% memory utilization threshold. The first process is then allowed to reach the 90% memory utilization threshold before the "low on memory" message is surfaced to the end user. This message is raised to the end user even though the other process hasn’t even been used.

In either scenario, once the forms being handled by an existing process are closed, that process is discarded and a new WebFormsHost process is spun up in its place. Depending on how the users in your organization are making use of the client, they may be able to reduce the number of times this message appears by making a point of opening forms from the grid rather than through an existing form. Outside of that recommendation, though, the best advice I can provide would be to close the opened forms as they're no longer needed in order to allow the client to spin up a new process with an entirely new 2GB ceiling.

In Update Rollup 15, we will be introducing a number of additional enhancements that will lower the memory footprint that each form utilizes, which in turn will make these thresholds more difficult to reach. More enhancements will be made in Update Rollup 16 and beyond, as well.