Exchange 2010 memory use

howler

howler

howler

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5 Oct 2004
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Our Exchange 2010 server seems to be very hungry on resources, no matter how much RAM I keep adding to it the memory use is always at around 80%

It is hosting under 100 mailboxes and is not that heavily used, I started off with 4GB and it really struggled, so put it up to 6GB, performance was better but still using a lot of RAM

It now has 8GB and is still using 80% of memory, performance seems ok but it just seems a little odd

Is this normal?
 
Probably, Recommended memory is 4GB + 5MB per mailbox
Is this on a VM by any chance?
 
The more of the database that can be held in memory, the better it will perform. So as Dangerous says, Exchange (and SQL) will use as much memory as it can. This is one of the main reasons why MS recommend these are kept on dedicated servers
 
oddjob62 said:
The more of the database that can be held in memory, the better it will perform. So as Dangerous says, Exchange (and SQL) will use as much memory as it can. This is one of the main reasons why MS recommend these are kept on dedicated servers
Click to expand...

True, but its not terribly helpful for virtualised environments. Memory is shared resource and you don't want things grabbing it "just in case"

Not sure if the VMware balloon driver handles taking Exchange down to size or not.....
 
Applications shouldn't have to be aware of their enviroment - if so then that would be a knife in the back for virtualisation.

Numerous papers including some good white papers surrounding exchange virtualisation in particular - have a look around the VMTN communities/blogs :)
 
Stolly said:
True, but its not terribly helpful for virtualised environments. Memory is shared resource and you don't want things grabbing it "just in case"
Click to expand...

Well you just have to give it as much as you can spare for that job. Fact is that data in memory is silly times quicker to get at than data on disk, so these Applications will grab as much as they can.

Yes, if you set a limit on the VM the balloon driver will kick in.
 
It takes as much memory as you can give it. Pretty much as a poster above said, it will use 80% of whatever you give it until the mailstore is in RAM fully. I once had a 64GB RAM system with Exchange using 40GB :) It is odd!
 
It would have if the sys admins didnt go one further than the OP and start ******* with the registry etc to try and limit the amount of RAM it could use :)
 
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