Product Information
Stopping sapstartsrv.exe on windows stops the complete instance
Have you ever wondered why stopping the sapstartsrv service (sapstartsrv.exe) in Windows environment brings the application down as well !
In UNIX/LINUX environment this is not the case , you stop/restart the sapstartsrv service it will have not bring the application server crashing down 😉
Motivation
I was working on my test system and I had to test some conditions for which I had to terminate the sapstartsrv service and restart it. I am used to Linux env where we manually call the sapcontrol -nr XX -function StopService SID to stop the sapstartsrv.
This time I was working on my winodws test so as usual practice I wen to services.msc , found out my sapstartsrv.exe ( SAPSID_XX ) and stopped it. Then I began my other task which I was performing and suddenly I got an alert/popup saying my user had been logged out due to “connection to partner broken “.
Oh boy! I had made a blunder 😐
Play it safe!
Now the question I came across this time was why is this behavior?
So I quickly logged onto my other test system which runs on RHEL 7 and tried the command :
sapcontrol -nr XX -function StopService SID
I got the result “StopService” OK
I wanted to confirm the status of my application instance, so I quickly ran the command :
sapcontrol -nr XX -function GetProcessList
Bingo! All the process were green!
(Again I started the sapstartsrv manually.)
So what was wrong with Windows ?
Understanding the behavior
I did some research on how the sapstart and sapstartsrv is called in both the OS environments.
Believe me there is a difference 😐
In unix/linux OS the instance is started by the “process” sapstartsrv and not the “service” sapstart.
The sapstart -service controls the start/stop of the application instance components ( dispatcher + icm + gateway+igs).So when you stop the sapstartsrv it will ot affect the system start/stop. As sapstartsrv would ask “sapstart” to start child processes, (more information in startsap.trc)
Okay! Agreed , but what’s up with Windows?
Here comes the answer!!
In windows the instance is started directly by the start service (process sapstartsrv.exe). On Windows a “service” is a process ,sapstartsrv is such a user defined service . When you stop the sapstartsrv.exe it will bring down your instance as well 🙁
There is a very nice document explaining this behavior : SAP Start Service
What next ?
Next time before restarting the sapstartsrv.exe is windows be careful ! that’s IT
Regards,
Manjunath Hanmantgad
Thanks for sharing the informative information
Hi Rihan,
Glad it helped you.
Regards,
Manjunath Hanmantgad