SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive
64bit OS with SQL 2000 Enterprise 32-bit
We are in the process of upgrading hardware, and our applications are not ready for SQL 2005 64-bit. They run but the application code is suspect at best so the 2005 runs slower than 2000. Since we cannot move to 2005 64-bit, we have to utilize Sql 2000 Ent 32bit. Our hardware is as follows: Dl385 2.4Ghz AMD Opteron 2 Dual-Core CPU’s (4 Cores)16 GB Ram
EMC Clarion San attached
Windows 2003 Std x64
Sql Server 2000 Ent 32 Bit The database server backends a web farm. Actually there are over 25 DB servers, but we are looking at this configuration specifically. In load testing scenarios, we tried it with AWE enabled and disabled. It seemed that with AWE enabled, we would easily see performance improvements due to SQL being able to utilize memory above 3GB. We actually realized 12% decrease in application response time, and 5% decrease in processor capacity. (Without AWE, the server avg 5% less cpu time than with AWE enabled). I am not sure whether we configured the server correctly to utilize AWE or not. I know on 32-bit OS, we would have needed to modify the boot.ini with the /pae switch for the application to utilize about 4GB. Is this still the case with the 64-bit OS? We did not set this in the boot.ini since I assumed SQL would be able to use the memory simply by enabling AWE and setting the Min/Max memory settings. Any help is greatly appreciated. Ed
that should be all you need to do, ie, enable AWE
you do not need to set max mem I assume what has happened going from no AWE (SQL – 2GB) to AWE (SQL 15GB)
is that your test ran faster (12%)
hence had higher CPU while running (%5) but this means approx 7% saving per call because there is less disk IO of course, this is assuming I am interpreting what you are saying correctly
Thanks for the response. Actually the with AWE enabled, the response time was 12% slower and 5% more CPU was used.
then use perfmon to get the SQL Server memory usage numbers also compare disk IO, did it go down when AWE was enabled also check the SQL Server error logs
for an error message concerning lock pages in memory privilege
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