Excessive Paging

  • I have a server that is Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition Service Pack 2 that has 2 GB of RAM and 2 Processors that are 1.6 GHz running SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition Service Pack 2 version 9.00.3080. It is a 32 bit machine. I know the memory is not enough and I am planning to take it to 4 GB (all that the server will hold, new machine is not an option). So my question is, is there anything else I can do to help with the paging? Or narrow down what is causing the paging? On average the pages/sec are 40 and max of 1000 from perfmon.

  • SQL Server itself should not cause any paging.

    Paging is probably caused by other processes on the machine.

    If paging is really a problem you can try to force SQL server to use less memory so there is more memory available for other processes. Do this by setting the max memory option for SQL server.

    Note that this will make less memory available to SQL server which means that the buffer cache will be less efficient which means more disk traffic from SQL server.

    You have to experiment to find the optimal setting.

    To see which processes are suffering from paging you can use Task Manager. Enable the column "Page fault delta" and you will see exactly what process is generating page faults.

  • Thanks for suggestion but sqlserver.exe avg PF Delta is around 100 and total page faults are 18,930,170. McAfee is also up around 150 PF Delta. I would like to mention this is not my server it is a customers as I would have done things differently

  • So it seems that MacAfee and SQL server is fighting each other for the last bit of memory.

    Either disable the antivirus or reduce max memory for SQL server.

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