Number of rendering items in the publishing queue exceed the RenderThread count in the config

Question

We have a strange issue happening since the last few weeks, where the number of Items in the publishing queue in Rendering state exceed the "RenderThreadCount" of the config. While, the items stuck in rendering continue to be in rendering state but, the new items in the queue get picked up and are published successfully. These stucked items continue to be in the queue until cleared manually. These items are sometimes passed through the queue successfully within minutes.

SDL Tridion 2011 We have in total 3 CMS publishers, with RenderThreadCount set to 3 and deployThreadCount set to 1 on all the 3 publishers. However, the items in rendering sometimes exceed 100+

Can someone please guide me as to how we can identify what has gone wrong with the publishing queue due to which rendering count is continuing to increase?

Answer 1

I have seen similar symptoms when the publisher's render timeout was configured so that it didn't time out. The exact details escape me now, so I would recommend checking all your timeout settings, both in the management snap-in (for the publisher) and in the configuration files (for the transport service).

The point is that when a render reaches its timeout, it goes to "Failed" instead of "Rendering".

In the case I am talking about, we also saw symptoms that seemed to show that fewer render threads were available, but I think it's quite possible that there are failure modes that keep a thread in use, and others which free it, but still don't update the status.

Answer 2

@Dominic Cronin Thanks for your response :) The publisher's render timeout has been set to 120000 since the last 5-6yrs on all the 3CMS Servers, however this issue is been seen from last few weeks.Also, the items that are not heavy (i.e. do not take longer time to render) are also stuck in the rendering state till they are cleared or republished manually.With respect to your comment regarding the availability of fewer render threads, this is not the case that we are seeing here as the publisher continues to pick new 3 threads for rendering & publishes them successfully leaving these items in render state till cleared.