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All Forums  SQL Server 2005 Forums  SQL Server Administration (2005)  Memory Alloc for multiple instances of sql server

Author  Topic  buzzi Starting Member 48 Posts Posted - 2010-10-08 : 11:15:04 Hello, Please provide some insight into the issue i have. I have Multiple instances sql server, running on a Window 2003 server 2003 enterprise x64 edition.(SQL Server Standard 64 bit edition with sp3) in each of them(active/passive cluster) And i have a maximum of 32 GB RAM on the server. Below are the configurations that i have done for "max server memory" setting. NOTE: I DID NOT SET ANY "min server memory" for any of the instances Default Instance set to :16384(16GB) Named Instance 1 set to:3072(3GB) Named Instance 2 set to:8192(8GB) leaving 5 GB to the OS.So i was expecting the memory for any of the respecitve servers will not go beyond the allocated values. BUT Yesterday i was running log backups on the instance (Named Instance 1 set to:3072(3GB)), and the logs were pretty big(arround 50GB), and when i see the task manager for this instance, i saw the memory usage for sqlservr.exe for this instance showing more than 8 GB.Can somebody please explain this behavior. I was reading articles that the max memory will only control the buffer pool, which means that when we have maintance jobs(like dbcc checks,backup tasks), it will take more memory than allocated? Thanks for the help