We have 4 GB of RAM with the /3GB switch in boot.ini. Is there any settings
we can change in the properties for the server to gain performance ? I was
under the environment tab and there was memory settings and we have it set
at 512MB for min memory and 2048 MB for mem conservation threshold. Also on
the Processing tab, the read-ahead buffer size is 4MB and Process buffer
size = 300 MB.

Can I increase this for better throughput ? Thanks

I think more reasonable settings might be something like min memory of 2048
and max memory of 2500. This is talked about in the AS Operations Guide.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro.../anservog.mspx
I don't like seeing too much difference between the min and the max memory
settings because you will take a BIG hit when you exceed max memory. The
system goes through and does a massive clearing of virtual memory usage
until it gets to the min memory setting. This means that virtually the
entire data cache is flushed in your settings. Also, make sure that the min
is set above the virtual memory stabilizes to after a fresh restart of the
msmdsrv service. If you have lots of dimension members and the vm usage
stabilizes above 512MB then the system will have a hard time trying to get
down to the min since it cannot ever get below what it stabilizes to after a
fresh restart (because of the way we do dimension member loading).

The 300MB still might not be enough. Look in the above mentioned Operations
Guide. In it, I talk about how to tune the process buffer size -- see
Appendix C.

Hope that helps.
--
Dave Wickert [MSFT]
dwickert (AT) online (DOT) microsoft.com
Program Manager
BI SystemsTeam
SQL BI Product Unit (Analysis Services)
--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


"Hassan" <fatima_ja (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote