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OS memory utilization

We are using DPA for monitoring SQL server 2008- 2012.

A question for OS memory Utilization:

Since SQL server is designed to use as much as possible RAM on the server, it is always will use above 80% memory, so in this case DPA for OS memory utilization will always show warning or critical on the chart. So how can I correctly know the SQL server is low on RAM?

See this documentation of Microsoft Server Memory Server Configuration Options

quote below:

"By default, SQL Server can change its memory requirements dynamically based on available system resources.

When SQL Server is using memory dynamically, it queries the system periodically to determine the amount of free memory. Maintaining this free memory prevents the operating system (OS) from paging. If less memory is free, SQL Server releases memory to the OS. If more memory is free, SQL Server may allocate more memory.

......

Allowing SQL Server to use memory dynamically is recommended; however, you can set the memory options manually and restrict the amount of memory that SQL Server can access"

Thanks,

  • Great question and since DPA is cross DB platform, that resource metric makes more sense on the Oracle side.  What I usually recommend for customers is to go to the resource view for the instance in question, click on the settings link under OS Memory Utilization, click on the "custom" radio button and adjust the thresholds.  You can even disable the warning level and just set the critical to 98% or something that won't likely get tripped during normal operations.  At that point, you can save it for just that instance or you can set that as your new default across all of  your monitored instances.