Server 2012 R2 Exchange 2013 Handle Leak

A handle leak is a special case of a memory leak. You're leaking memory from a narrowly defined pool: the set of available handles. Typically a handle would be a memory pointer, which on a 64 bit machine would take 8 bytes. So 261076 handles times 8 bytes is 2039kB, just short of 2meg. That's pocket change on modern machines.

But the problem you need to look out for is: what happens when you run out of handles? How does your app degrade? Is there a hard limit or does it start to break before the max? Can you graph the number of handles and restart services when it gets beyond a certain point? Is there a way to change the limit on the number of handles to mitigate the problem? Does restarting services fix it or does it require a reboot?