February 13, 2008
SSIS: Suddenly Can't Write to Buffer
Problem: periodically, one of my SSIS packages was throwing an error saying "The
buffer manager cannot create a temporary storage file on any path in the BufferTempStoragePath
property. There is an incorrect file name or no permission." The package in question then
would hang, locking a file that it was trying to import.
Solution: The BufferTempStoragePath is kind of self explanatory. As usual, Jamie Thomson's
SQL Junkie blog has an excellent article that gives useful background on the issue, in Dataflow mechanics. He also points to my other favorite SSIS reference, Microsoft SQL
Server 2005 Integration Services, by Kirk Haselden. Apparently my package needed to write some
data out to the buffer and did not have proper permissions, just as the error says. So, where is
this buffer? Neither THomson nor Haselden address this, but Haselden does answer an asked
question: why does my package usually succeed, only rarely failing? "The Data Flow Task only uses
the BufferTempStoragePath when it runs out of memory and must spool buffers out to
disk." (p422)
In a random
forum I found someone mentioning that the default buffer location is in c:\documents and
settings\<username>\.... Well, there's my problem — the user executing the package
does not have such a directory. No wonder it failed. Thankfully there is an override at the
package level: you can directly set the path in a Data Flow diagram's properties.
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