January 11, 2006 at 10:02 pm
I have a server (2000 Server Standard SP4, SQL2000 Enterprise SP3+hotfix (.818 build)) that has 4G of RAM and has the /3GB switch set in the boot.ini file.
When I use Spotlight, I can see that the OS is only using 1GB of RAM and that the server has over a Gig of RAM that is unused.
I have the Max RAM setting set to ~3539 out of a max of 3839 due to a requirement of the software vendor that uses the DB.
Anyway, I got some downtime for the server and tried setting the MIN memory setting to 2.5G and when I bounced the server it spooled up to 900M and stopped, but when I leave the Minimum at the default, it spools up to 1.7G.
Any thoughts on what I might be missing? I'll open a support call with Microsoft if I need to, but as it is I'm hoping I'm just missing one key step.
Thanks!
January 11, 2006 at 10:26 pm
Unfortunately the /3GB switch only works on the Win2000 Server OS on Advanced and DataCenter versions. it is not supported on Standard.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291988/
Note, the answer to this and many other related memory/tuning issues can be easily found on the microsoft.public.sqlserver.* newsgroup archives:
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.sqlserver.server?lnk=sg&hl=en
January 12, 2006 at 7:24 am
I am seeing the same thing, with regards to SQL only getting up to 1.7 gigs of memory, with about 790mbs remaining, but it will not use it.
Have Page Life Expectancy crash from 45000+ to 1 as well. Only happened once though.
Thanks,
Graham
January 12, 2006 at 7:29 am
Wow. Thanks for the info. I'm shocked that our server group put Win2K Standard on a server that had 4GB of RAM...At least I know what the issue is now. Thanks!!!
January 12, 2006 at 12:37 pm
I don't think it too unreasonable to have 4gb of ram with sql standard. 3 gb would probably be best but quite often the memory comes this way with new hardware - before we went to 2003 our new servers came with a minimum of 10Gb ram - slightly pointless with w2k. I'd prefer not to use 2gb with sql std - cuts the o/s too short, especially if you have maint plans or dts aplenty or handle xml as most of these run out of sql server's memory and in the o/s.
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www.grumpyolddba.co.uk
http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/
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