Network Management

The SolarWinds SQL Server shows all the Server's RAM being used by the SQL service

This article describes an issue where the SQL Service is consuming all of the available RAM on the SQL Server. This causes the OS to be sluggish, slow and have performance-related issues due to the OS being starved of RAM.

First published date

10/30/2018 2:27 PM

Last published date

3/5/2025 12:37 AM

Overview

SQL Server will consume as much memory as you will allow it. By default, that number would encompass 100% of your numerical memory on your machine.
SQL Server will dynamically use memory, so even if you set max memory to 12 GB, if SQL requires, it will use memory to 12 GB.
The reason for this is that SQL Server caches the data in the database in RAM so that it can access the data faster than it could if it needed to read the data from the disk every time a user needed it.

You can specify a Limit in SQL Server Management Studio.

In the Left pane tree, right-click on Server instance > Go to Properties > Memory.

Below you can see a default memory limit configuration consuming all available RAM memory.

Product section

Orion Platform

Cause

SQL server default configuration.

Resolution

Here you can specify a Max and Min Limit.
In the example below, you can see 16 Gb of memory limited by SQL
This leaves 4 Gb for OS (If OS has 20 Gb)

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