High Memory Utilization on Orion Server

We were running into the same issue in our environment — single-server SolarWinds deployment with memory usage regularly spiking to 99%. Our server has 32GB of RAM, and like you, TAC wasn’t able to identify a root cause.

One thing we noticed was that SQL Server (running on the same server) was consuming 16GB of RAM by default, even though our total DB size is only 12GB. That allocation seemed excessive and potentially contributing to the overall memory pressure.

We reduced SQL Server's max memory allocation from 16GB to 12GB via SSMS:

• Connect to the SolarWinds server in SSMS

• Right-click > Properties > Memory

• Set Maximum server memory (in MB) from 16384 to 12288

• Click OK

• Then monitor via Task Manager and confirm that memory is released

We also checked the buffer cache hit ratio using this query to ensure SQL was still healthy:

SELECT (a.cntr_value * 1.0 / b.cntr_value) * 100.0 as BufferCacheHitRatio
FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters  a
JOIN  (SELECT cntr_value, OBJECT_NAME 
    FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters  
    WHERE counter_name = 'Buffer cache hit ratio base'
        AND OBJECT_NAME = 'SQLServer:Buffer Manager') b ON  a.OBJECT_NAME = b.OBJECT_NAME
WHERE a.counter_name = 'Buffer cache hit ratio'
AND a.OBJECT_NAME = 'SQLServer:Buffer Manager'

After making the change, we’ve consistently seen memory usage drop to 75–76% (56% as of today), and the SolarWinds GUI is noticeably more responsive. No downtime or performance issues were observed post-change. If needed, you can always revert to 16GB.

Hope this helps anyone facing similar SolarWinds high memory utilization issues on a single-server deployment.

Cheers!

We were running into the same issue in our environment — single-server SolarWinds deployment with memory usage regularly spiking to 99%. Our server has 32GB of RAM, and like you, TAC wasn’t able to identify a root cause.

One thing we noticed was that SQL Server (running on the same server) was consuming 16GB of RAM by default, even though our total DB size is only 12GB. That allocation seemed excessive and potentially contributing to the overall memory pressure.

We reduced SQL Server's max memory allocation from 16GB to 12GB via SSMS:

• Connect to the SolarWinds server in SSMS

• Right-click > Properties > Memory

• Set Maximum server memory (in MB) from 16384 to 12288

• Click OK

• Then monitor via Task Manager and confirm that memory is released

We also checked the buffer cache hit ratio using this query to ensure SQL was still healthy:

SELECT (a.cntr_value * 1.0 / b.cntr_value) * 100.0 as BufferCacheHitRatio
FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters  a
JOIN  (SELECT cntr_value, OBJECT_NAME 
    FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters  
    WHERE counter_name = 'Buffer cache hit ratio base'
        AND OBJECT_NAME = 'SQLServer:Buffer Manager') b ON  a.OBJECT_NAME = b.OBJECT_NAME
WHERE a.counter_name = 'Buffer cache hit ratio'
AND a.OBJECT_NAME = 'SQLServer:Buffer Manager'

After making the change, we’ve consistently seen memory usage drop to 75–76% (56% as of today), and the SolarWinds GUI is noticeably more responsive. No downtime or performance issues were observed post-change. If needed, you can always revert to 16GB.

Hope this helps anyone facing similar SolarWinds high memory utilization issues on a single-server deployment.

Cheers!