Please start any new threads on our new site at https://forums.sqlteam.com. We've got lots of great SQL Server experts to answer whatever question you can come up with.

 All Forums
 SQL Server 2005 Forums
 SQL Server Administration (2005)
 Does Max/Min SQL Server Memory use paged memory?

Author  Topic 

SQLIsTheDevil
Posting Yak Master

177 Posts

Posted - 2011-12-16 : 12:53:40
Hello,

I was reading up on SQL Server Memory Settings (see: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178067.aspx) and it doesn't seem to explicitly indicate that it doesn't touch the paged memory. There is a flag to lock pages in memory, which is necessary to use AWE. But to keep things very simple, let's say I don't have any switches (i.e. /3gb, /pae) in the boot.ini file, AWE is not enabled, nothing of the sort. Windows manages virtual memory and the paging file, I understand that. But does SQL Server only use physical memory or can it use the paging file, like any other Windows application?

As an example, if I'm running Windows Server 2003 Standard (32-bit), SQL Server 2005 (32-bit), with 4 GB of RAM, what sort of min and max SQL Server memory setting options do I have? If SQL Server can use the paging file, could I set the max SQL Server memory to 6GB? In other words, can you tune SQL's memory to use the Windows paging file?

Thank you.

pnash
Starting Member

26 Posts

Posted - 2011-12-16 : 13:13:43
any application cant use more then 4 gb of memory on 32 bit environment so same for sql. paging file is fully associted with OS .
SQL cant directly use page files
Have a look on below link.
http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com/2006/07/memory-use-in-sql-server.html
Go to Top of Page

SQLIsTheDevil
Posting Yak Master

177 Posts

Posted - 2011-12-16 : 13:57:28
Thank you. Great article. Having read it over, though, it states that virtual address space can be a combination of physical memory and the paging file. That would seem to indicate that the min and max server memory settings can be set to values greater than the physical memory in the machine. For example: I have 4 GB of RAM in the machine. Again, AWE is off and I'm not locking pages in memory. I can set the min and max sql server memory to 1 GB and 6 GB, respectively. That's what it sounds like to me. Is this correct?
Go to Top of Page

Sachin.Nand

2937 Posts

Posted - 2011-12-21 : 01:15:06
If you have not set AWE ON then the VAS space for 32 bit sql server will only be 2GB irrespective of max memory setting.

AWE will extend that to the max memory setting you have set but will still be limited to 64 GB only.Also the memory allocations for buffer pool will be done by the memory mapped by AWE and for non buffer pool allocations the memory will be used from the MemtoLeave area.

PBUH

Go to Top of Page
   

- Advertisement -