In the server properties/memory screen, the max is 2,147,483,647 MB by
default. At first I misread that and thought it was in bytes so that the
value was 2GB. That seemed too low for an upper limit considering you can't
increase the value in that box. But when I realized it said MB then I got
even more confused. That means the value is 2 Petabytes (2,000 TB). Okay,
that makes even less sense. Who has that kind of memory in a computer?
Nobody. Is that just a ridiculously high limit that MS uses as a defualt
assuming that nobody will get there in the next couple of decades? Or is it
not really in MB?

Unless I'm wrong, never mind. I found a similar question in the
microsoft.public.sqlserver.server newsgroup from 2009-11-14 with the subject
"Q on Maximum server memory"

2 PB. That's pretty crazy. I wonder when that will happen! It's funny to
think back on computers that I used years ago that only had 256 kb of RAM
and no hard drives. Or even worse, a Trash80 that my dad had with something
like 16k of memory! LOL. When computers are using 2PB of RAM we'll look at
8GB of RAM as a joke.



"Keith G Hicks" <krh (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote

Actually, that number is not 2 PB - it is just the maximum integer value in
SQL Server. And yes, it is just a default that you should change to the
actual amount of memory you want to allocate to SQL Server. Note: on x64
platforms - it is required that you set max memory or SQL Server will take
all of the available memory and starve the OS.

"Keith G Hicks" <krh (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote