Rackspace: Max Server Memory Considerations for SQL Server

Question

I have just adopted a SQL Server 2014 Web Edition instance, hosted on Rackspace; my main objective is that I need to improve performance.

What screamed out to me is that this server only has 8GB of RAM installed. Further to this, max server memory was set to the default of 2TB (2147483647MB). This obviously needs to be brought down to a figure less than the total available RAM.

Usually, I would provision 4GB RAM solely for the O/S. However, this would be 50% of the RAM.

As I am new to Rackspace, I am unsure whether the recommended provision of RAM for non-SQL server processes would be different.

Any help or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks, Stevie

Answer 1

Rackspace or VM ,below would be the formula to start with,if only SQLServer is running on the box.

below is a recommendation from :Glenn Berry

Physical RAM                        MaxServerMem Setting
2GB                                           1500
4GB                                           3200
6GB                                           4800
8GB                                           6400
12GB                                         10000
16GB                                         13500
24GB                                         21500
32GB                                         29000
48GB                                         44000
64GB                                         60000
72GB                                         68000
96GB                                         92000
128GB                                       124000 

The above recommendation is a good place to start with,if you are not running SSIS,SSRS.. and other things on same box..

Jonathan Kehiyas recommends to monitor below counters ,even after configuring memory settings here :How much memory does my SQL Server actually need?

SQL Server:Buffer Manager\Page Life Expectancy
SQL Server:Buffer Manager\Page reads/sec
Physical Disk\Disk Reads/sec