Chapter 4: https://www.simple-talk.com/books/sql-books/troubleshooting-sql-server-a-guide-for-the-accidental-dba/

You don't absolutely have to set it, but if you don't,...

Perfectly normal. Unless you set max server memory otherwise, SQL can and will use as much memory as is available on the server.

Tune the queries, tune the indexes. If they won't allow that then they must accept that performance will remain poor.

Normal, expected, documented behaviour. Nothing wrong at all.

If you want SQL to use less memory, set max server memory so that it knows that it's not allowed to use 100%...

Unlikely to have an measurable effect even if the...

UncleBoris (6/10/2013)

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Obviously I could be wrong but thought the downside of Parameter sniffing could mean the same plan being used for two queries that return different size result sets. i.e...

Well that's a problem right there. Single column nonclustered...

Tune the queries, tune the indexes.

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/finding-the-causes-of-poor-performance-in-sql-server,-part-1/

http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/finding-the-causes-of-poor-performance-in-sql-server,-part-2/

Unlikely to have a noticeable effect on performance

Bad parameter sniffing.

http://sqlinthewild.co.za/index.php/2007/11/27/parameter-sniffing/

https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/parameter-sniffing/

Or maybe stale stats.

Rename the file on disk to me model.ldf. Fastest fix.

In that case, -f is documented at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms190737.aspx

Starts an instance of SQL Server with minimal configuration. This is useful if the setting of a configuration value (for example, over-committing memory)...

-f on the SQL Server executable is not a format file setting. It's minimal configuration startup option.

The -f parameter on BCP.exe specified a format file, and on BCP.exe -F specifies...

You need free space equal to the size of all the files of the source database, not the size of the backup file.