Note: This article was originally published in 2013. Some steps, commands, or software versions may have changed. Check the current Windows Servers documentation for the latest information.

This article explains fsdmhost.exe and why it matters for your environment. Windows Server is a group of operating systems designed by Microsoft to handle enterprise-level management, data storage, applications, and communications.

What is: fsdmhost.exe

Fsdmhost.exe is the (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable “Executable”) for the (http://www.microsoft.com “Microsoft”) File Server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_management “Data management”) Host (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_%28computing%29 “Process (computing)”). Thus far a lot of people run into this process on a (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/default.aspx “Windows Server 2012”) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_%28computing%29 “Server (computing)”) because it is in charge of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_deduplication “Data deduplication”). As most of you would have found out, this process can become resource intensive. The service uses a lot of (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random-access_memory “Random-access memory”), (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_processing_unit “Central processing unit”) and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_storage “Disk storage”) resources as it is computing the de-duplication chunks while reading and writing to the hard drive. It is perfectly normal for this process to be one of your most demanding at times.

If this process is continuously demanding most of your serve resources, look into improving the de-duplication performance by better adjusting your de-duplication settings. Eventually the serve should also normalize as the initial de-duplication faces come to an end. Regardless, optimal settings for your system should be in place to avoid performance issues.

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