Memory Usage in TS

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celcius233

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Hello.

We're currently running Windows Server 2003 SP2 (Standard Edition). We have
a Dell Poweredge 2950 running RAID-1, 4GB RAM, current updates, etc.

The server is our main database server (SQL 2000) and is a terminal server
for our DB users. We are a very small operation (about 20 users in the server
at a time). For the past few weeks we've experienced trouble with SQL not
utilizing the available Page File on the server. In the last day or so it's
been tweaked to finally start using it a little more efficiently and we've
seen good results.

My questions: Knowing that Win Server 03 Standard cannot address more than
4GB of PF, is it worth it for us to put in another 2GB to make it 6GB total
for terminal server? Would Terminal Services itself make good use of the
increased memory apart from the PF while allowing SQL to have it's way with
the available 4GB? Am I not understanding this properly? :-)

Thanks for any input.
 
Re: Memory Usage in TS

Hi,

2003 Standard 32-bit supports a maximum of 4GB. For
more you need either 32-bit Enterprise, 64-bit Standard,
or 64-bit Enterprise. Normally for servers with greater than
4GB RAM I prefer to use 64-bit unless there is some
compatibility issue. For 64-bit 8GB is the minimum I suggest
with 16GB being common (of course everything is subject to
your specific needs).

The other consideration is that SQL Server 2000 has maximum
RAM limits as well which depend on the version you have. It
is likely that the version you are using is limited to 2GB.

Now, if the OS version supported the extra RAM you could
have SQL Server use a maximum of 2GB with the rest used
by TS sessions and the OS. There are some hard resource
limits if running under 32-bit depending on the number of users
and applications running, but in many cases you can work
around them with a registry change.

Does your current database application require sql server to
use large amounts of RAM to run efficiently? Is your database
large? There is a point at which it no longer makes sense to
run SQL Server on the same box as your TS due to CPU,
RAM, and IO requirements.

-TP

celcius233 wrote:
> Hello.
>
> We're currently running Windows Server 2003 SP2 (Standard Edition).
> We have a Dell Poweredge 2950 running RAID-1, 4GB RAM, current
> updates, etc.
>
> The server is our main database server (SQL 2000) and is a terminal
> server for our DB users. We are a very small operation (about 20
> users in the server at a time). For the past few weeks we've
> experienced trouble with SQL not utilizing the available Page File on
> the server. In the last day or so it's been tweaked to finally start
> using it a little more efficiently and we've seen good results.
>
> My questions: Knowing that Win Server 03 Standard cannot address more
> than 4GB of PF, is it worth it for us to put in another 2GB to make
> it 6GB total for terminal server? Would Terminal Services itself make
> good use of the increased memory apart from the PF while allowing SQL
> to have it's way with the available 4GB? Am I not understanding this
> properly? :-)
>
> Thanks for any input.
 
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