LiteAgent.exe consumes high memory

Hello all,

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The Lite Agent is a component of the AWS PV Driver package which is specifically responsible for handling Shutdown and Restart events from AWS APIs.

However, this agent is not used on Nitro platform based instances (T3/M5/C5/R5, etc.) and as such, can be safely disabled. This is because, Nitro based instances use ACPI signals to perform the Reboot and Shutdown events.

More information can be found here:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/xen-drivers-overview.html#xen-driver-awspv

As mentioned in the document linked above, "When running on Nitro generation instances, the AWS PV drivers are not used and the LiteAgent service will self-stop starting with driver version 8.2.4. Updating to the latest AWS PV driver also updates the LiteAgent and improves reliability on all instance generations."

So based on the above information, to resolve the issue here, we have the following two options:

1. Install the latest version of AWS PV drivers (even if your instance uses ENA driver for networking)
2. Disable the LiteAgent Service altogether (as long as you are on a Nitro instance type)

Please refer the instructions here to upgrade the Drivers:
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/WindowsGuide/Upgrading_PV_drivers.html

In case you want to disable the service, you can run the following commands in powershell:
PS C:>Set-Service AWSLiteAgent -StartupType Disabled
PS C:>Stop-Service AWSLiteAgent

Should you face any memory related issues with the agent even after disabling/updating it, please let us know.

I hope this helps. Please let us know if you have further questions or concerns. We would be happy to help!

I am experiencing the same thing with several m5.large Windows 2016 instances. Killing the process does not seem to do anything so the only way I've been able to solve it is to restart.

Is there a solution for this?