January 18, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Hi all,
I have read in numerous locations that a good rule of thumb for calculating the amount of RAM required for a server is total MDF size / 2.
If, theoretically one had a large number of databases on one SQL instance and the total MDF size totalled say 200 GB, would that mean > 100GB RAM would be recommended?
It seems excessive but it would be good to read your thoughts.
Thanks in advance,
Ben
January 18, 2012 at 5:05 pm
bathawes 16438 (1/18/2012)
,I have read in numerous locations that a good rule of thumb for calculating the amount of RAM required for a server is total MDF size / 2.
You can't make the assumption that you would apply that formula.
I have a Reporting Database Server with nearly 1TB of Data and the "current" machine only had 4GB of RAM and it performs pretty well with the excepting of Bulk loads and backups of VLDB's. 🙂
For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/
For better answers on performance questions, click on the following...
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/
January 18, 2012 at 10:19 pm
The answer is || that much.
Truth be told there are no hard set values. It very much depends on what your server is doing, the number of queries that get run, how volatile the data is in that 200GB file (for example if you are only actively working with 100MB of that you wouldn't need as much memory) and the level of performance that you want to achieve.
All of those can obviously be answered by budget. In the past I've run 6TB DW systems with 64GB of RAM without any problems. I've also run 2GB databases on servers with 48GB of RAM and had huge issues.
What will be key is what you can afford memory wise, get as much as you can. Don't compromise on your storage system either as you will be writing and reading from disk at some point. If you tune your code well you can also get away with less memory. Smart database design fixes a lot of problems.
January 19, 2012 at 9:27 am
Agree with what's been said. If you have a server, monitor memory, look for pressure. That's a sign you might need more.
A few links:
Viewing 4 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply