Our SQLServer 2005 databse server consistently uses 94%-98% of physical memory and 47%-49% of virtual memory. The server has 8cpus and 16gig of RAM. Are these figures normally to be expected ?
Welcome to the forum. It is based on load of the server. The sql server use extra memory for buffer pool (caching data) page life expectancy counter is a good measure for time life of (number of seconds a page will stay in the buffer pool without references , min 300 sec or 5 minutes). have a look to: http://204.9.76.233/Community/forums/t/30314.aspx Can you post page life expectancy counter for the server , what database size?
The page life expectancy is 137745 which increased ti 137782 while I monitored it approx 2 mins The Memory stats , allocated and used are both running at 14,560,000 approx The database contains over 2 million records,the data file is 24gig, index file is 22gig and the lob file is 20gig. the Transaction log is currently 1.2 gig but will be shrunk during its next backup. Also double take is installed for failover protection
page life expectancy 137782 , means that server keep cach for 38 hour , so you have extra memory reserved by server which is excellent indication performance. you can limit memory by configuring max memory (if you need memory to be used by other applications on the server) What is the total server memory? , 32 or 64bit environment?
I consider the figures of 98 % memory usage is normal for the following reason: Total size of data and index = 44GB buffer pool size =~ 14GB which is 30% of total size Page Expectancy is 38 hour (Excellent) , and server need not to read from disk or swapping data from cache.
As you have had information from Moh Hassan I would like to refer that such memory management is dynamic within SQL Server as it occupies all it has been set and will release as and when operating system requires. Unless there si a good reason to set min & max memory I would recommend to leave the memory settings to DYNAMIC.
