AppInsight for SQL - Target - total Server Memory always around 0.00KB

Question

Will SQL just chew about all of the resources it has available? We added two more gigs last night and it used it up. If this is normal, then I change the thresholds on "Target - Total Server Memory. Thanks for your help!

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brianflynn · Answer

I think the definition we posted for this metric should be updated.  It should first state that there is nothing inherently wrong with SQL Server’s total memory equaling the target memory thus resulting in this metric equaling zero.  If Total Server Memory is less than Target Server Memory, resulting in this metric being a positive number, it *might* be a sign of memory pressure, but only if you have evidence that the database instance needs to use memory in which case this may indicate it can’t get the memory it needs (memory pressure). This would be more clearly indicated by the Memory Grants Pending metric. Of course if you are facing this challenge, you may wish to know what queries are causing this and to do that, you need to leverage SQL Server wait time analysis to identify the queries that suffer from memory pressure.  Here is a blog post explains troubleshooting memory pressure with both system metrics and wait time analysis.  If you have Database Performance Analyzer, wait time analysis is easy because you can look through the Trends view to check for the existence of wait types like RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE, which indicate a query waiting on memory.

AlexSoul · Answer

brianflynn‌,

I have done this change and restarted the whole box, however, memory still maxed out and AppInsights is reporting 0kb free again. Is anything else I can check?

AlexSoul · Answer

easy peasy lemon squeezy

Thank a million brianflynn‌