AWE working?

Ning

Hi all,

This is a question related to AWE settings. I am on windows 2003 ent version with SQL Server 2005 std version. I have configured SQL Server to use AWE and min memery as 22G and max as 26G (I have 32G in total as physical memory). I do see the message in log as "Windows Address ... Enabled", but when I am using performance monitor to view total memory in kb for SQL Server, it never starts at 22G (usually at 1G). And I doubt why The account I am running SQL Server is an admin account, so it can definitely locked down the pages in memory. Also, I do think AWE is working somehow, after several hours in running, the total memory will up to 8, 9 or 11G. So, apparently, it is over 2G per process limitation. I still want to know.

1. Is my AWE setting working

2. If not, how to fix that

3. How to confirm how many memory is actaully using by SQL Server

Thanks,

NIng

Arnie Rowland

(The comment below assumes 32 bit OS and 32 bit SQL Server.)

1. Since you see that SQL Server's memory usage grows up to 11GB, it is obvious that AWE is working. SQL Server only requests memory from the OS as it is needed -once allocated, it usually keeps it.

2. Nothing to do

3. Performance Monitor, as you are using, indicates SQL Server's memory usage. For more detailed memory usage analysis, you can look at the various SQL Server Memory counters in Performance Monitor, and you can use some the the system functions that will give you memory data. Look at the System Views. (Click on Database, Views, System Views.) Try:

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counter

Looking specifically at the SQL Server Memory Manager objects.

Ning

Are you sure this is by design

My performance is awful after I have upgraded. SQL Server 2000 used to locked the memory as it starts, so the production server (4 cpus and 32 G memory) was doing a lot better than my development server with (1cpu and 2G memory). However, after upgrade, the performance level of the production server is awful. For example, a query need 9 seconds on test server used to run only 2 seconds on live server. Now it needs 8 seconds ...

Arnie Rowland

After upgrading, it is NECESSARY to rebuild ALL the indexes, and update the statistics. If you have not done that, your performace will often be signicantly worse.

And even then, some queries will run faster on SQL 2005, and some (albeit few) will run slower. It may be necessary to 'revise' queries that are signicantly slower in order to use the new ways that SQL 2005 produces execution plans.