Memory usage

I have a SQL server with 3.5GB memory. SQL is aquiring about 2.1GB and the OS and other services a few hundred MB. The server is showing over 880MB available bytes. ie not used for anything and yet Windows 2000 is paging like a mad. We are running SQL 2000 Ent edition and Windows 2000 Advanced Server. Server performance appears to be impeded by a disk bottleneck. Has anyone seen this behaviour before? Why isn't Windows/SQL taking all the memory?Jonathan:
I have seen this occur before and is probably due to the
fact that windows limits each process to 2gb of memory
unless you set the AWE flag that allows a process to use
more through the virtualization of memory addresses
greater than 2gb. Also, you may want to look into
setting your paging file at a fixed size or 4gb or larger
rather than setting a lower and then an upper limit for
the page file. Finally, you will need to check the
performance monitor on the server and see what kind of
cache hit ratio you are getting, it may be that sql does
not need any more memory then what it is currently using.
>--Original Message--
>I have a SQL server with 3.5GB memory. SQL is aquiring
about 2.1GB and the OS and other services a few hundred
MB. The server is showing over 880MB available bytes. ie
not used for anything and yet Windows 2000 is paging like
a mad. We are running SQL 2000 Ent edition and Windows
2000 Advanced Server. Server performance appears to be
impeded by a disk bottleneck. Has anyone seen this
behaviour before? Why isn't Windows/SQL taking all the
memory?
>.
>|||> I have seen this occur before and is probably due to the
> fact that windows limits each process to 2gb of memory
> unless you set the AWE flag that allows a process to use
> more through the virtualization of memory addresses
> greater than 2gb.
Not entirely true. AWE is needed on 32-bit Windows platforms in order to
address over *3GB*. Without AWE, a Windows application like SQL Server can
still use up to 3GB if the OS edition supports it and the server is
configured to use it. The /3GB boot.ini switch is needed under Windows 2000
AS in order for applications to address up to 3GB without AWE.
For more information, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;274750&Product=sql
--
Hope this helps.
Dan Guzman
SQL Server MVP
"Z" <anonymous@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0b7d01c3b9a3$c97dd2a0$a301280a@.phx.gbl...
> Jonathan:
> I have seen this occur before and is probably due to the
> fact that windows limits each process to 2gb of memory
> unless you set the AWE flag that allows a process to use
> more through the virtualization of memory addresses
> greater than 2gb. Also, you may want to look into
> setting your paging file at a fixed size or 4gb or larger
> rather than setting a lower and then an upper limit for
> the page file. Finally, you will need to check the
> performance monitor on the server and see what kind of
> cache hit ratio you are getting, it may be that sql does
> not need any more memory then what it is currently using.
> >--Original Message--
> >I have a SQL server with 3.5GB memory. SQL is aquiring
> about 2.1GB and the OS and other services a few hundred
> MB. The server is showing over 880MB available bytes. ie
> not used for anything and yet Windows 2000 is paging like
> a mad. We are running SQL 2000 Ent edition and Windows
> 2000 Advanced Server. Server performance appears to be
> impeded by a disk bottleneck. Has anyone seen this
> behaviour before? Why isn't Windows/SQL taking all the
> memory?
> >.
> >