Hello everyone,
We’re currently investigating a recurring Ignition Perspective freeze affecting our environment, and we’re hoping to get some technical guidance or shared experiences from the community.
Environment
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Ignition Version: 8.1.45 (b2025010709)
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Operating System: Windows Server 2022 (amd64),6 vCPU, 16 GB RAM)
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Java Version: 17.0.13+11-LTS (Zulu)
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Memory Allocated: ~4 GB (heap)
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CPU Usage: ~5%
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Database Connections: 5/5 (SQL Server)
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Tags: ~35,821
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Redundancy: Active / Connected (Cold Standby)
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Clients: Perspective sessions via Citrix (Microsoft Edge)
Since mid-2025, our operators have experienced intermittent Perspective freezes — the screen remains visible but becomes unresponsive (no clicks or navigation possible). These freezes typically clear up after a few minutes or once the browser or Citrix session is refreshed.
The problem consistently occurs around 10:00 AM, though it doesn’t crash the Gateway. During each freeze, direct Gateway access remains fully functional, and if a new Citrix session or browser instance is opened immediately, Ignition loads and operates normally. This confirms that the Gateway, Citrix infrastructure, and network connectivity remain stable during the event. The problem appears to be confined to active Perspective sessions within existing Citrix/Edge instances, reinforcing that the issue likely resides at the application or browser runtime level, rather than at the system or infrastructure level.
Over the past several days, the Java process (“Zulu Platform x64 Architecture”) has shown a steady increase in memory usage, rising from around 3.3 GB after a reboot to more than 6 GB within four days, while CPU usage remains low.
We also captured the screenshot below from the Gateway’s Status → Overview page alongside Windows Task Manager. At that time, Ignition reported about 3.3 GB of used memory inside the gateway, while Task Manager showed the Zulu Platform x64 Architecture process using over 6.6 GB. CPU usage was around 9–15%, and no other processes appeared to be using excessive resources. The gateway uptime was four days, and memory usage had roughly doubled since the last reboot.
No critical errors appear in the gateway logs at the time of the freeze. Thread diagnostics show many TIMED_WAITING and RUNNABLE threads, mainly under perspective-worker and platform-executor. When the freeze occurs, the Ignition Gateway remains accessible, and Perspective loads normally if opened in a new Citrix session or another browser. This suggests that the issue only affects active Perspective sessions already running when the freeze happens.
We’ve rebooted the server to reset resource usage and monitored the trend over several days, confirming that memory consumption continues to grow between restarts. System performance (CPU, disk, and network) appears stable during the freeze, and no faults are seen in PLC or SQL connectivity. We’re setting up a simple system usage display in Perspective to log and trend CPU, memory, and thread counts over time. We’re also reviewing gateway timer and scheduled scripts to see if any long-running or asynchronous operations might be contributing to the issue but didnt find any yet.
At this point, we’re trying to determine whether the observed memory growth is simply normal Java garbage collection behavior or a sign of a potential leak within the Ignition runtime. We’re also interested to know if others have seen similar cases where Perspective sessions freeze, yet the gateway and new sessions remain responsive. Lastly, we’re considering enabling Java Flight Recorder or detailed GC logging to capture more information, but we’d like to confirm whether that’s the best next step for diagnosing what’s retaining memory between restarts.