I’ve had a suspicion that since the Zimbra 8.0.6 update, something’s been wonky with Zimbra’s webmail client, so I decided to perform a very simple test: open Zimbra Webmail and leave it running.

Here is the outcome of that test.

Normal Operation for one business day.
This is how I operate day after day in my normal office environment.

Running:

• Zimbra 8.0.6_GA_5922
• Chromium Version 32.0.1700.123 Debian 7.4 (248368)

Memory Usage at Application Launch:

• Browser window with Zimbra webmail client
  Thursday 8:47am – 139.5MB
• Browser window with Google
  Thursday 8:55am – 45.92MB

Memory Usage ~ 24 Hours Later:
I left both browser windows running overnight. Here is where the memory usage stands…

• Browser window with Zimbra webmail client
  Friday 8:28am – 564.3MB – 304% Increase in 24 Hours
• Browser window with Google
  Friday 8:29am – 60.78MB – 32% Increase in 24 Hours

Memory Usage ~4 Days Later:
I left both browser windows running over the weekend.  Here is where the memory usage stands…

• Browser window with Zimbra webmail client
  Monday 10:32am – 1.6 GB – 1,046% Increase in ~96 Hours
• Browser window with Google
  Monday 10:33am – 60.53MB – 31% Increase in ~96 Hours

Since Zimbra cut the Evolution Connector from its product line, and the Zimbra Desktop software is still only available for a 32-bit platform, this leaves Zimbra operation on Linux sorely lacking. What has VMWare done?!  Hopefully Telligent can fix it.

-Robbie

*** UPDATE March 24, 2014 ***
We’ve ruled out Chrome by itself as the issue since it is only the window containing the Zimbra webmail client that shows any increase in memory usage.

To rule out browser extensions, I will run my next test with all Chrome extensions disabled.
Test 2 – Disable all Chrome Extensions and re-test.

Memory Usage After Weekend:

• Browser window with Zimbra webmail client
  Friday 5:06pm – 106.3 MB

Memory Usage After Weekend:

• Browser window with Zimbra webmail client
  Monday 8:37am – 1.7 GB

*** UPDATE April 15, 2014 ***
This has been added as a bug report for 88031 – https://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=88031