Applications Systems

Wsmprovhost.exe High Memory Usage Freezes HA Poller During Failover

In some SolarWinds Platform environments using SAM/AppInsight with WinRM, orphaned Wsmprovhost.exe processes on HA pollers can consume excessive memory. During HA failover this may freeze the VM, prevent successful failover, and cause the SolarWinds Web Console to go down.

First published date

2/10/2026 4:31 PM

Last published date

2/10/2026 4:31 PM

Overview

Symptoms

  • SolarWinds Web Console becomes unavailable after an HA failover or switchover.
  • The affected HA poller VM appears frozen or extremely slow during/after failover.
  • Task Manager on the HA poller shows many Wsmprovhost.exe processes with very high memory usage.
  • HA pool members may report as PartiallyOperational or fail to complete synchronization. This is due to the HA task being unable to complete due to the high memory usage.

 

The wsmprovhost.exe process indicates that a Windows Remote PowerShell session is active and generally appears when entering a remote session. The process is created on the server, and more are added when you run other processes in the remote session.  This is typically caused by SAM applications, as they would use it as part of APM polling.

Product section

Application Performance Monitor

Cause

This can be caused by broken SAM templates that fail to close a PowerShell on each poll, or when polling Exchange servers.

 

 

 

Resolution

Avoid applying heavy AppInsight/WinRM templates indiscriminately to all pollers and servers; scope them only where required.
Periodically review Wsmprovhost.exe usage on critical HA pollers and high‑value monitored nodes.