Just a quick post today.  A few months back we decided to increase the RAM on our dotCMS servers to 12Gb.  We were starting to notice some performance lags in our boxes that only had 4Gb.  In doing this we also had to make the switch to 64bit Windows.  Everything went very smoothly, albeit we did not see the performance increase we were hoping for.

Today, while talking with a dotCMS support agent, he made us aware that Java Service Wrapper that dotCMS uses to let you install dotCMS as a service in windows is a 32bit application and as such only allows windows to access 4Gb of memory.  On top of this, the 64bit windows version of this third-party application is not freely available.  The Java Service Wrapper that ships with dotCMS is developed by a company called Tanuki Software.  Here is a link to the software page:  http://wrapper.tanukisoftware.com/doc/english/download.jsp

If you scroll down to the bottom of the page you will note note #2:

*2: 64-bit Windows versions of the Java Service Wrapper are not currently being made available in the Community Edition.

The Community Edition is what dotCMS ships with.  Moral of the story, if you are using dotCMS in windows and want to access more than 4Gb or RAM, you need to purchase a Standard Version License from Tanuki.  I’ll post more after we’ve made the upgrade.