SSAS Silently suppresses duplicate dumps <MaxDuplicateDumps> by ACALVETT

By default SSAS will generate one unique dump and then suppress all instances of duplicates until the service is restarted although the number of duplicates to be generated can be controlled by <MaxDuplicateDumps>.

Clearly supressing dumps is very valuable as it reduces the need to analyse a dump to confirm its a duplicate, introduces a mechanism to reduce the resouce impact of dumps.

One of the significant downsides to the current implementation is that an error may be generated that causes a dump but its not identified or reported by a user or "monitoring". The next time the error is generated say a week later the user reports the problem and an administrator is likely to assume there is no problem because there are no current dumps and nothing in the logs.

I have also found working on cases that there is an element of doubt introduced when dumps are suppressed. For example, we see an error or a service failure but because the error has been seen before (and the prior conditions did not cause service failure) the dump is suppressed and we can not be sure what has happened.