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Virtual vs. Physical Memory

  • February 18, 2005 at 4:09 pm

    #163694

    I'm trying to troubleshoot a Severity 19 EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION error that occurs occasionally on one of our servers. When researched it seems to point to some sort of resource exhaustion. Before I go any further, I'm hoping for some clarification on SQL's memory usage. BOL has quite a bit on this subject, but I'm still hazy on a couple of things.

    With SQL 2000 Standard Edition on Windows 2000 Server, the "Maximum Amount of Physical Memory Supported" is 2 GB.

    I have two questions:

    1. If SQL Standard Edition has 2 GB of RAM allocated and then needs more, will it then use virtual memory? Or is 2 GB the total of all the memory it can use, both physical AND virtual?

    2. On the Memory tab of the Server Properties dialog in Enterprise Manager, the maximum I can set for SQL is 4 GB which is the total installed RAM on the box. This seems misleading. If I set it to 3 GB, SQL will only use 2 GB because it is Standard Edition, correct? (Or incorrect?)

    Thanks in advance for your time.

    Bruce McCarthy

  • February 21, 2005 at 8:00 am

    This was removed by the editor as SPAM

  • February 21, 2005 at 9:56 am

    #543351

    Bruce, eventhough you have 4GB memory, standard is going to use no more than 2GB.  It probably just better to let sql dynamically determine memory utilization.

    Regarding virtual memory - as I understand it, sql doesn't typically use this type of memory.  I think the idea is that sql is more effecient at pulling data off disks via the sql optimizer than to sort through a virtual file and page info into and out of it.

  • February 22, 2005 at 8:51 am

    #543493

    From my understanding, which may or may not be correct, SQL Server Std can only use 2GB from memory from the OS. That should be physical, but potentially if the OS got crunched it could be virtual. However it's only 2GB.

  • February 22, 2005 at 9:01 am

    #543505

    Maximum memory SQL Server Std edition can support is 2GB and i think it inclueds Physical + Virtual


    subban

  • February 22, 2005 at 10:32 am

    #543532

    Thank you all.

    It does seem misleading that the Memory tab in Server Props shows all the RAM on the box though ...

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