June 15, 2009 at 7:48 am
Hi All,
We are trying to set up a SQL Server 2008 for our main DB. Our DB is just 300 Gig with around 1000 queries per minute hitting the DB. Now the question is should we enable AWE on a 64 bit Server with 16 CPU and 64 GIG of RAM? OS is Windows 2008 Data center edition
Thanks
-Roy
June 15, 2009 at 9:37 am
AWE has no use on 64 bit. It's used on 32 bit servers to allow access to memory above the directly addressable limit.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
June 15, 2009 at 9:49 am
Hi Gail,
Thats what I thought as well. But this particular blog is the one that put a seed of doubt in my mind.
http://blogs.msdn.com/slavao/archive/2005/04/29/413425.aspx
Currently what we are doing is setting up the server with the best configuration as possible and doing a load testing. .
-Roy
June 15, 2009 at 10:00 am
Ok, as far as I'm aware, Slava's talking about the locked pages feature of pages allocated by AWE. (This one came up on the private newsgroups a while back too). Also see his followup post - http://blogs.msdn.com/slavao/archive/2005/08/31/458545.aspx
Quoting from that blog post
Q: Hello Slava, I would like to confirm my understanding that on SQL 2005 64 bit edition it is recommended to grant Lock Pages in Memory right to the SQL account and then turn on the AWE setting. Thanks
A: Yes, we do recommend to turn on Lock pages in memory so that OS doesn't page SQL Server out. However on 64 bit you only need to grant the right "Lock Pages in Memory" to the SQL account for SQL Server to utilize this feature. You do need to to change any of AWE settings through sp_configure.
If you've got Enterprise edition there you can enable locked pages. If you've got standard edition, get SP2 and you'll be able to enable locked pages.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
June 15, 2009 at 10:15 am
Thank you so much... 🙂 Your help is very much appreciated. Now I know what needs to be done.
-Roy
June 15, 2009 at 10:16 am
Forget about AWE on 64-bit systems, 64-bit has enough direct accessable memory you don't need to extend it. IMO enabling it would only cause overhead because sqlserver will use the memory structures !
What you must do on 64-bit is setting the MAX MEMORY MEMORY for SQLServer or it will even starve the os.
There are guidelines on how much memory to leave for "others" !
It is also important to check all server software to be 64-bit, because once you go back 32-bit, it cannot switch back to 64-bit for that application thread.
Johan
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June 15, 2009 at 10:23 am
Our first step is to find the optimal set up for the server. (We have done 4 set up for the Disk already and bench marked each one of them.) Our only issue us that we have only two Raid controllers. We have to figure out the optimal disk set up for that.
Then we will be running a full test for all Apps that are there. Quite a few apps are there to be tested. 2 month time for testing. I am also planning to set data compression for couple of tables that has millions of rows and is not being used regularly. Those tables are queried maybe 10 times a day. Then we will do the upgrade.
-Roy
June 21, 2009 at 1:39 am
Hi Roy,
I'm just curious, how do you go about benchmarking I/O stats, can you give me some pointers plz. I have use SQLIO and thats it, as the Disks are SAN based and from what I have read elsewhere, perfmon counters are not very reliable for geting SAN I/O stats
June 22, 2009 at 7:14 am
Hi Dean,
We are not using SAN Drives. That is the only way we could do some bench mark. Unfortunately we have only two Raid controllers. So we are stuck with trying to get the best out of 2. I would prefer to have atleast one more controller.
-Roy
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