Unexpected failure detected: NestedException shows in GMS logs.

  • 7002694
  • 19-Feb-2009
  • 10-Dec-2013

Environment

Novell GroupWise 8
Novell GroupWise 7
GroupWise Mobile Server Windows edition
Micosoft SQL Server

Situation

GMS server is installed on a Windows server and is configured to access MS SQL application located on a separate server. There are frequently problems with a syncing that are resolved by restarting a GMS services.

Resolution

Unexpected failure detected: NestedException errors that show in activity log viewed from a GMS user mailbox via WebPIM interface can have few reasons. In case of a GMS and MS SQL running on two separate servers, this error can be caused by communication problems. What you can see in PIM_User_<date> is similar failures like in example bellow:
 
Unexpected failure detected: PIMDBException

com.sync.db.PIMDBException: java.sql.SQLException: Network error IOException: Address already in use: connect
In paralel to a time you see those errors in above log, there are similar errors visible in other logs, for instance in a GroupWise_Translator_<date> (if enabled):
 
GWEvents exception occured: HTTP transport error: java.net.SocketException: No buffer space available (maximum connections reached?): connect; nested exception is:
HTTP transport error: java.net.SocketException: No buffer space available (maximum connections reached?): connect
 
The "java.sql.SQLException: Network error IOException" tells about application connection problems that originate from a TCP layer.
Default TCP protocol stack configured on Windows servers is not very suitable for environments that might have connection problems or face higher traffic load. If a Windows server faces any connection problem to another host, it keeps a connection locked for longer time period. Consequently if next opened connection hits the same problem, it will be locked and the target host can easily run out of available TCP connections. Once the host reaches out the max available connections, you can start seeing problems reported by any application like in case of GMS server complains over unable to connect to MS SQL databases.  
There are several resources in the Internet that deals with a tuning TCP stack on Windows server. You can have a look at following TID 3724926 Slow performance of GMS on Windows.