Analysis Server Memory Upgrade

Dear Anyone,

We recently upgraded our analysis server from a 4GB to 8GB. For a couple of weeks, we noticed that the server memory isnt going up to close to 8GB and only goes to around 4. We use the /3Gb and /PAE on our server.

Can anyone recommend some memory tweaks that we can use on the Analysis Services?

Thanks,

Joseph

Unfortunately in this case having more memory is not going to help.

32 bit version of Analysis Server will not use more than 3Gb of memory.

You should move to 64 bit hardware to be able to take advantage of more memory of your system.
In AS 2005 you should be able to install multiple instances and distribute your databases across instances.

Edward.
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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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Just want to clarify that this 3GB limitation is on Analysis Services 2005? I thought the memory limitation was for Analysis Services 2005 got a lot bigger from that of the 2000 version. I'm I wrong in thinking this?

Furthermore, can anyone please share the maximum memory configuration we can give Analysis Services 2005 to maximize the available memory? I.e. Analysis 2005 is on a box with 8GB of memory.

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Memory limitations for AS2K5 are the same as AS2K -- they are based on the OS (see earlier post).

Therefore to use 8GB of memory you must be running on a 64-bit platform, as a native 64-bit application.

That being said however, what might be confusing you, is that memory usage in AS2K5 has gotten a while lot more efficient. We now have a dimension memory cache, replicas used for dimension security are smaller and more efficient, etc. Thus you can do more with what you have.

But our general advise is still the same -- running on 32-bit hardware, there is no reason to have more than 4GB on your server. See the AS Operations Guide for more guidelines like this:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2000/maintain/anservog.mspx

Hope that helps.

_-_-_ Dave

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