The topic is a bit general, but is there a rule of thumb when it comes to
figuring out the amount of memory on a computer running Analysis Services?
I'm trying to run a cube on my laptop, and it fails horribly. My PC is
running WIndows 2003 Server Standard Ed., SQL Server 2000 SP3 Ent. ed and
Analysing Services 2000 SP3 Ent.ed. I have 1 GB physical RAM, 1,5 GB
pagefile. The processor is a Intel Pentium M processor 1700 MHz, 1,69 GHz.

My cube is restored from a CAB archive. The folder with the datafiles is 280
MB. Is this a lot or a little? The original database is close to 5 GB, but
my archive is based on only a selection of this year's data.

When I try to see the data in Analysis Manager, it starts to show the data,
then the OLAP service hangs, stops and gets restarted. I get loads of

"Unexpected fatal error occurred. Attempting to restart server. " in my
event log.

The OLAP service starts again, tries to show the data, shuts down and
restarts, gets too much to do, shuts down, restarts ...

Is there anything I can do to make the cube actually work on my laptop? In
Analysis Manager, I've set the Environment Properties to
Minimum allocated memory: 512 MB
Memory Conservation threshold: 750 MB

All help is appreciated!

Kaisa M. Lindahl

Before you do anything, just a fresh reboot or restart of the msmdsrv
process, what is the virtual memory taken by the msmdsrv process? This is
the server itself. What may be happening is that the system does not have
enough virtual memory -- with the minimum allocated memory and conservation
threshold settings that you have + dimension memory. The fresh reboot number
gives you the starting point for memory allocation the service stablizes
with all of the dimension memory allocated; then you set the minimum
allocated and conservation threshold settings from there.

The actual size of the database means nothing as far as memory allocation is
concerned. It is the amount of memory taken by the *dimensions* that count.

Also, if you are going to be doing a full reprocess of the database while a
current version is on-line, you should read the section titled "Memory
Consumption by Shadow Dimensions" in the Analysis Services Operations Guide,
at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pro.../anservog.mspx
It will impact your memory usage.

The other thing that hits me off hand is whether or not you have recently
did a full process of the database after the recovery? I have also seen
situations where a corrupted dimension can cause the msmdsrv process to
cycle like that. Frequently a full process of all dimensions will clear that
up. I don't recommend always doing full processing for minor issues, but if
your service is cycling like that, corrupted dimensions could be the
problem.

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.

"Kaisa M. Lindahl" <kaisaml (AT) hotmail (DOT) com> wrote