Recommendations for RAM allocation.
Memory utilization for the SQL Server Database Engine is bounded by a pair of configuration settings:
min server memory (MB) and
max server memory (MB).
Over time , SQL Server will attempt claim memory up to the limit set by max server memory.
Microsoft currently recommmend: "75% of available system memory not consumed by other processes" which is a little vague when those other processes or SQL instances will often use variable amounts of RAM.
The numbers below can be used as a starting point, test and measure performance to tune the exact RAM allocation for your environment.
| Physical Memory | Min Allocate to SQL Server |
Left for OS /disk cache | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GiB | MiB | GiB | MiB | GiB | MiB |
| 8 | 8192 | 5 | 5120 | 3 | 3072 |
| 12 | 12288 | 8 | 8192 | 4 | 4096 |
| 16 | 16384 | 11 | 11264 | 5 | 5120 |
| 24 | 24576 | 18 | 18432 | 6 | 6144 |
| 32 | 32768 | 25 | 25600 | 7 | 7168 |
| 40 | 40960 | 32 | 32768 | 8 | 8192 |
| 48 | 49152 | 39 | 39936 | 9 | 9216 |
| 56 | 57344 | 46 | 47104 | 10 | 10240 |
| 64 | 65536 | 53 | 54272 | 11 | 11264 |
| 72 | 73728 | 60 | 61440 | 12 | 12288 |
| 80 | 81920 | 67 | 68608 | 13 | 13312 |
| 88 | 90112 | 74 | 75776 | 14 | 14336 |
| 96 | 98304 | 81 | 82944 | 15 | 15360 |
| 104 | 106496 | 88 | 90112 | 16 | 16384 |
| 112 | 114688 | 95 | 97280 | 17 | 17408 |
| 120 | 122880 | 102 | 104448 | 18 | 18432 |
| 128 | 131072 | 109 | 111616 | 19 | 19456 |
| 256 | 262144 | 221 | 226304 | 35 | 35840 |
| 512 | 524288 | 445 | 455680 | 67 | 68608 |
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Q321185 - Find the SQL Server version
SQL Server Version numbers
Convert between Bytes, KB, MB, GB, TB and KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB