Maximum number of asynchronous responses has been reached

Some more Command Notification Tricks and Tips

Here are a couple a tidbits on command notification with Operations Manager 2007 I’ve seen people asking about recently.

1) I’m getting Alerts “Script or Executable was Dropped” when command notifications execute. How do I prevent it?

What you’ll typically see in the Alert description is the following:

“The process could not be created because the maximum number of asynchronous responses (5) has been reached, and it will be dropped. Command executed: ………”

What is happening here is that notification command execution in response to alerts is attempting to fire more than 5 (default) notification command processes asynchronously. By default the number of command processes executed defaults to 5 to protect the RMS from alert storms potentially overwelming the system with runaway processes.

The default of 5 async notification processes allowed can be overridden. The following solution comes with a warning “Increasing the default number of concurrent command notification processes could cause RMS performance issues”. For those running somewhat lengthy batch files, scripts, executables via command notification the following may allow such to scale out if your RMS has the horsepower to cope:)

It’s worth noting that it is the RMS that runs notifications. The follow registry modification on the RMS and subsequent stop and restart of the HealthService service will trigger the new maximum responses allowed:

One the RMS use RegEdit to navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Modules

Under this key create a new subkey called Global

Under the new Global subkey create another subkey called Command Executer

Under the Command Executer subkey create a new DWORD value AsyncProcessLimit

For the value of AsyncProcessLimit you can set a minimum of 0x00000001 (Strongly not recommended) and a maximum of 0x00000064 (100) (again definitely not recommended).

So, if you wanted to increase the number of async command notifications from 5 to 10 the key would look like:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Modules\Global\Command Executer\AsyncProcessLimit REG_DWORD:0x0000000a