AWE is enabled yet SQL can only grad 1.6G | SQL Server Performance Forums

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AWE is enabled yet SQL can only grad 1.6G

Just installed the Sql 2005 Standard Edition + SP2 on Windows Server 2003 R2 + SP1 (8GB memory + 2 dual core Xeon CPU) I use local system to start all SQL services. The /PAE switch is added to boot.ini. AWE is enabled on SQL with min 5120 and max 6144. The message "Address Windowing Extensions is enabled." also appears in SQL Server Logs. However SQL Memory Manager/Total Server Memory, the SQL can only grab 16640 KB which is far under 5GB and the System is running extremely slow. Any thoughts?
– please post the result of sp_configure.
– did you doublecheckhttp://www.sql-server-performance.com/awe_memory.asp
Check other processes running on the same server – perhaps there just isn’t enough RAM available.
Also make sure you run some big juicy queries -sql server won’t take memory until it needs to.
Well, find out what’s going on.
When I loaded a huge test table, the SQL Memory Manager/Total Server Memory was climbing as well. I can see SQL25 AWE behaves differently from SQL 2K Ent which will grab the configured min memory during the startup. SQL 25 simply ignores the min memory configuration during the startup. Personally, not think this change is good for a dedicated SQL server.
This is by architecture to make AWE MEMORY dynamic in SQL 2005 on Windows 2003 …. Read BOL ….
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190673.aspx Using AWE-mapped Memory with Windows Server 2003 SQL Server 2005 supports dynamic allocation of AWE memory on Windows Server 2003. During startup, SQL Server reserves only a small portion of AWE-mapped memory. As additional AWE-mapped memory is required, the operating system dynamically allocates it to SQL Server. Similarly, if fewer resources are required, SQL Server can return AWE-mapped memory to the operating system for use by other processes or applications. MohammedU.
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