Allocated Memory Alerts
ByEvery once in a while, I have one of those “well, duh” moments. Today was one. Got an e-mail in a backchannel discussion about an apparent increase in Allocated Memory Alert warnings from SBS Monitoring services, and it reminded me that I have a few servers that I’ve been getting daily alerts from. My take up to this point has been “they don’t seem to be causing any performance problems, so I’ll just look at them later.” So, needless to say, a couple of servers haven’t been looked at in at least a year. Well, not for this alert, anyway.
But later in the e-mail thread, someone pointed out a post on the official SBS Support Blog that discusses the need to change the settings for the allocated memory alert based on the amount of RAM installed in the server. Sure enough, after I read through the post, I noted that all of the servers that have been getting the alert are servers with 2GB of RAM or more.
So, now we’re off to change the Allocated Memory Alert settings as outlined in the post. And as a result, should reduce the amount of mail we’re getting and filtering through every day.
As Susan says, the official SBS Support blog is definitely one to watch. And I for one was guilty of not watching it, so I missed this little gem for about 8 months.
6 Comments
February 4th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Thanks. I get several of these a day.
Were you able to reduce the number of alerts? My smaller servers are running 2 Gigs of Ram. According to the post, the default setting is already set for 2 Gigs. Can you think of a way to reduce the alerts from a lightly used 2 Gig server?
-Ken
February 4th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
Basically, you have to look at the average memory used by the server during a recent period, and use that value (or one slightly higher than that) as the cutoff for the alert. In some cases, we’ve seen a reduction in the number of alerts. In others, we haven’t. We haven’t been able to make the time to get the correct numebrs yet, but that’s where we’re looking.
-Q
March 7th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
These vaules seem to be based on PF usage not Physical memory, as I have a server running 2 GB Ram and the 30 day average is 3,463,335,325.2 which is more than 2 GB, current PF udage is 3.4 GB
I have change the default 2147483648 to 3500000000 3.5 GB
Am I correct or wrong ??
March 11th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Correct, these values are NOT based on physical memory. Two things you want to look at:
1. The page file should be 1.5x the size of physical RAM, so if it’s not set for 3GB (with 2GB RAM in the box), you need to make that adjustment.
2. I try to go about 10% above the 30 day average when I use that value to adjust these settings. If you set the minimum too close to the 30 day average, you’re still going to see alerts. You only want to seee the alerts when something unusual is happening, otherwise you’ll become blind to them (think the boy who cried wolf).
January 27th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Thanks, good clear information – Did the trick for me.
May 21st, 2009 at 5:47 am
Thank you for this useful information. Have been receiving these for a little while.. and while knowing the specs of the machine are more than capable, and nothing has been tweaked outside of the regular SBS 2003 wizards etc….was a little curious why the warnings kept coming through.
This has resolved it.
Thanks agian.