Hi DBA folks,

This is a post especially for helping the DBA community which always gets bogged down by windows admin people and alerts which crop down daily..  

Memory reached threshold limit < 75% or 85%. Or free memory less than 100 MB. Please look after. I have been bogged down by lot of alerts like these atleast twice or thrice a week. 

Here are some possible solutions you can make up here is that,

  1. You can collect the evidence from Microsoft technet and knowledge base. I have a good knowledge base article,
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/321363 
  2. The link explains how the memory consumption of SQL Server is dynamic and it consumes memory even if the activity is low. This is a property of SQL Server. However if the operating system or other applications* need memory SQL Server releases the un used memory. Else it is hel up in buffer pool cache.In the words of the KB article itself,
    “SQL Server memory usage may continue to steadily increase and not decrease, even when activity on the server is low. Additionally, the Task Manager and Performance Monitor may show that the physical memory available on the computer is steadily decreasing until the available memory is between 4 to 10 MB. 

    This behavior alone does not indicate a memory leak. This behavior is normal and is an intended behavior of the SQL Server buffer pool.” 

  3. You can then request the windows admin team personnel or automation team (The team which sets the alerts in memory limit) to reduce the threshold limit.  Dont forget to give the proper justification stating the Microsoft article and provide the link.The limit I suggest is to have an alert if free memory is < 30 MB (50MB if the memory available is high in your case).

One more point to be noted here is that, the server which hosts the SQL Server should not host other applications. This is a Microsoft recommended standard. I could not find any official article for this, but any Microsoft consultant would suggest the same. So try to host and plan the other applications on a seperate server if your budget permits.

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