Allocated Memory Alert

[jallenaz]

I am getting the Allocated Memory Alert on our SBS 2003 server. The server is all up to date on updates except for the WSUS which I have just put off. We have 2GB of ram. The service that is causing the alerts is the sqlservr.exe. I've been through all of the links at:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/tags/Allocated+Memory/default.aspx.

I've installed the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Express and tried setting the maximum server memory for that process. The service is the MSSQL$WSUS. I set the max to 256 and now it is at 292,752K. It gets up close to 400Mb.

I could be wrong that it is something else setting off the alerts. This seems to be it, and on the Diva blog they say 256 is a good number. The store.exe is usually up around 500MB but today is around 62MB.

Why won't the Server Management setting work for me? I've also tried to limit the memory with the solution at the command prompt and recieved the message that 'override' is not a recognized RECONFIGURE option. Is there something that is causing this to happen that I can change. Maybe cleaning out old updates? They must all be still on the hard drive.

My next option would be to install the WSUS update and see if that helps.

Any suggestions?

Jim Allen

 

[gavm99]

Your not using SBS premium are you? I know ISA likes to eat memory.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[jallenaz]

I had not heard of SBS Premium. We are not running it.

sqlservr.exe seems to be behaving so far today. It was at 176MB when I got in to work. It's up a little to 280MB now. Still above where I set the maximum yesterday.

There must be something simple I am missing here. Maybe it's not possible to set a max on sqlservr.exe for wsus.

I would like to know what the w3sp.exe are. There are two of them and they use a fair amount of memory too.

Thanks,

Jim

 

[mofusjtf]

The issue is with SBSMonitoring. You need to throttle all instances of SQL to 100 MB. Sharepoint & Monitoring should not need more than that.

Step 1.
Create a .sql file called setmem.sql. (this is just a notepad document. change the extension to .sql.)

USE master
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE
USE master
EXEC sp_configure 'max server memory (MB)', 100
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE
USE master
EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 0
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE

Step 2
Create a batch or cmd file calling the previously created file. An example is below. Obviously the path to the setmem file will change based on where you save it. Which means it could require quotations if it is a long path. And obviously your servername and SQL instance name could change based on your server. You can use process explorer from sys internals to see all you instances of SQL running on your server. SBS will have at least 2 and then any instances of SQL for any third part apps like Backup Exec.

osql -E -S SERVERNAME\SBSMONITORING -i c:\setmem.sql

Also, you can use the Health monitor to up your threshhold for the alert.

Hope this helps.

 

[jallenaz]

I am going to try your batch file when I am not so busy with other work. We have only had two alerts since yesterday morning. the sqlservr.exe is hanging around 280MB. Not a problem there. But another process, w3wp.exe has jumped up to about 283MB. I am wondering if that might be the problem instead. Yesterday it was below 100MB. There are two instances of that process. I don't know what they do. I see on line that it can be a memory hog too. Do you know anything about w3wp.exe?

Jim

 

[gavm99]

w3wp.exe is part of IIS. So in your instance it would be handling things like OWA and RWW.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[jallenaz]

We aren't using OWA or RWW. I did have it set so the port was open and I could. So I tried closing it yesterday. The memory usage dropped a little. Still at 280MB. We had threee memory alerts this morning early. Nothing seems unusual from yesterday though.

I would like to try installing WSUS 3 if I can find how to uninstall WSUS 2 here somewhere. Not sure if that will help, but I can clean out old files with it. Maybe someone could point me to a thread on that.

Thanks,

Jim