[SIMS] What's your memory usage on your SIMS server?

[d-taylor]

Hi,

Our memory usage on our SIMS server is behaving oddly, I was just wondering how much memory other schools are using so I know if ours is normal or not.

We have around 1,000 students, 150 staff, 10 servers and 480 computers.

MIS server specs:

Virtual server
2 processors
6GB RAM
1 Gbps network connection

Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard SP1
SQL Server 2008 (fairly sure this is running SP2)

CPU usage and network usage is low. However, the initial memory was 2GB, and the server used about 96% of this, so I bumped it up to 4GB and then 6GB. However, it's maxed out at 96% yet again. I'm wondering if it needs more, or if SQL server just utilizes what's available.

What are other schools seeing, and how much memory are you using?

Server has 71 process running, and SQL server is using 4.7GB of the 5.6GB used memory

Regards,

Daniel

[matt40k]

SQL will use whatever it can get normally. The Capita's rule is size of the database + 50% + OS (1gb).

[british_government]

I read up on this recently, apparently it is normal for sql 2008 to just grab as much memory as is available. Seems strange to me.

Thanks Matt for the tip on capita's rule

[jinnantonnixx]

How to adjust memory usage by using configuration options in SQL Server

The principle behind this is that it's better to make use of memory rather than have nothing in memory, so SQL will use what it finds available. SQL server will release memory on demand, down to its low limit. If you look at these values, you'll normally find them set to crazy values, which means it will use everything it can. Don't adjust these values unless you have a good reason.

[d-taylor]

Many thanks for the replies, glad there's nothing to worry about. My SIMS database is 2GB so following that rule 6GB is about right

Daniel

[stgoodyeara]

My database is also alittle over 2 gb but ive got sims sql running on a Temporary server that has 64gb of ram and the SQL service is currently using 9gb which i find truely amazing that must be some serious duplication in memory!!