如何使用异步 GRPC 调用有效地管理 memory

Question

We are running into a memory issue when using GRPC to "fire and forget" messages.

We have a service A which manages database requests and a service B which publishes event data to an external data source.

Both services implement GRPC service to communicate with them. For example service B has a definition of:

service MessageBusService {
    rpc PublishRevision (RevisionRequest) returns (EmptyResponse) {}
}
message EmptyResponse{
}

In service A we make potentially thousands of calls to "fire and forget" the async service call.

_ = grpcClient.PublishRevisionAsync(revision);

Where the "revision" object can be ~1MB in size. Performing memory profiling we have noticed that the service can spike to 600MB+ of memory consumption. This seems to be due to the fact that the Task we spin off will hold onto object in memory until the GRPC service responds with the "EmptyResponse" object.

Does anyone know if GRPC supports any way to truly "fire and forget" to a service, or if there is a way to host a service that explicitly sends no response?

Is there a better way to perform this task?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Incase someone else ever runs into this issue and needs a solution. Ok so after some research I figured out a sort of hacky way to do what I wanted.

service MessageBusService {
    rpc PublishRevision (stream RevisionRequest) returns (EmptyResponse) {}
}
message EmptyResponse{
}

You can "fire and forget" to the GRPC end point by writing each element to the stream, as you are not expected to get a response for each write to the stream.

There is some outdated examples on microsofts page https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/architecture/grpc-for-wcf-developers/rpc-types