A systems administrator observes that a custom web application running on a Windows Server becomes progressively slower over several days. Performance monitoring tools show that available physical memory steadily decreases during this time, even when the user load is consistent. CPU utilization remains within normal ranges. The issue is temporarily resolved by rebooting the server weekly, but the pattern of slowing performance and decreasing memory then repeats. Which of the following is the MOST likely cause of this issue?
Missing OS security patches.
A memory leak in the custom application.
Clock skew between the server and the domain controller.
The correct answer is a memory leak in the custom application. A memory leak occurs when an application allocates memory but fails to release it when it is no longer needed. This causes the amount of available memory to decrease over time, leading to increased paging to disk and overall performance degradation. Rebooting the server clears the RAM and all running processes, which temporarily resolves the symptoms until the leak consumes a significant amount of memory again. Improper CPU affinity affects how processes are distributed across CPU cores and does not cause memory consumption. Clock skew relates to time synchronization and typically causes authentication errors. Missing OS security patches are a security risk but do not directly cause this specific pattern of gradual memory loss.