How much RAM is SQL Server actually using

Question

I am debugging one of my apps and noticed that the RAM on my SQL Server 2005 x64 box  running on a Windows 2003 R2 x64   is pegged and even going into the paging file     I understand that SQL Server 2005 x64 just grabs everything it can  so this might be normal         How can I check how much memory it is actually using

User · Answer

Related to your question  you may want to consider limiting the amount of RAM SQL Server has access to if you are using it in a shared environment  i e   on a server that hosts more than just SQL Server    Start   All Programs   Microsoft SQL Server 2005  SQL Server Management Studio  Connect using whatever account has admin rights  Right click on the database   Properties  Select  Memory  from the left pane and then change the  Server memory options  to whatever you feel should be allocated to SQL Server    This will help alleviate SQL Server from consuming all the server s RAM

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You should explore SQL Server Memory Manager performance counters

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Start -  Run -  perfmon Look at the zillions of counters that SQL Server installs

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You need to run Perfmon  start- control panel- administrative tools- performance    The counters you want  I believe  are in SQL Server Memory Manager   Target Server Memory is how much it s allowed to take if needed  Total Server Memory is how much it s currently using   If you click on Explain it ll pop open a box with the details   By default it s uncapped  and should use all but a couple gb of memory  it leaves that for the OS    However  there are various bugs and memory leaks that can cause it to go into paging

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Be aware that Total Server Memory is NOT how much memory SQL Server is currently using   refer to this Microsoft article  http   msdn microsoft com en-us library ms190924 aspx

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Go to management studio and run sp helpdb  lt db name gt   it will give detailed disk usage for the specified database   Running it without any parameter values will list high level information for all databases in the instance

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The simplest way to see ram usage if you have RDP access   console access would be just launch task manager - click processes - show processes from all users  sort by RAM - This will give you SQL s usage   As was mentioned above  to decrease the size  which will take effect immediately  no restart required  launch sql management studio  click the server  properties - memory and decrease the max  There s no exactly perfect number  but make sure the server has ram free for other tasks   The answers about perfmon are correct and should be used  but they aren t as obvious a method as task manager IMHO

[sql-server-2005] How much RAM is SQL Server actually using?

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