• I'm doing the same although for my application I give the database 59GB out of 64GB for the ETL and then trim it down to 12GB to free up the rest for processing an analysis services cube.

    It seems to work but are there downsides? And no, we can't ask for more memory at this stage. We only just got it bumped up from 32GB six weeks ago.

    I am considering the same method as the original post just for the last part of the ETL as well, since that is very memory-intensive and would utilise as much as we can throw at it. Trouble is by the time the ETL gets to the last step SQL has already taken a lot of the memory available to it.