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Memory utilization is very high on this 2008 R2 server, but I think it might just be caching RAM- performance on the server is fine and CPU utilization is very low. It is running DFSR which I believe claims a lot of RAM.

So here is what I see in task manager:

enter image description here

Looking a the processes it doesn't look like it adds up to 3.25 gigs.

Here is what RamMap shows me: enter image description here

I can see nonpaged pool is claiming a considerable chuck. This is RAM that is a program like DFSR is using for caching correct?

My pagefile.sys is 3.92 gigs if that info is at all helpful.

Do I have anything to worry about or is there something else I could check?

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  • Ironically it seems that RAMMap is the thing that is taking up the largest portion of your RAM. 4 GB of RAM is a little light for a 2008 R2 server. Jun 19, 2015 at 17:34
  • It was already high before I ran RamMap of course.
    – red888
    Jun 19, 2015 at 17:36
  • Is this a virtual machine or is this running on bare metal? Jun 22, 2015 at 2:13

3 Answers 3

6

You have a kernel memory leak. The nonpaged pool is 2.5GB. You can use poolmon to see which driver is causing the high usage.

Install the Windows WDK, run poolmon, sort it via P after pool type so that non paged is on top and via B after bytes to see the tag which uses most memory.

Now look which pooltag uses most memory as shown here:

enter image description here

Now open a cmd prompt and run the findstr command to see which driver uses this tag:

enter image description here

Now look at the file properties, find the driver version and look for an update.

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The the task manager screen you posted. Try using Resource monitor to track down the culprit. Go to the Memory tab and it gives a breakdown. I also agree, 4GB for Server 2008 is very light.

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In general 4GB of memory is slim for a file server. Remember that it will try to cache files when it can, and with just 4GB there is little room for any cache at all. The filesystem itself will also use memory for caching and even active pages (like the NTFS master file table).

Adding DFS-R means even more memory usage (it uses a Jet database).

Note: By the task manager screenshot you posted it appears that the server is also running the DNS role. Is this really something you need on a file server?

There are also some kind of inventory service running (ocsservice.exe) and Symantec software installed. Remember that all these add up to the memory usage, and if they run tasks at intervals then the memory usage will be even higher.

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  • Now that I think about it the server is supporting a bit more users than our other servers with identical configurations. I'll give procmon a go and see if I can identify the services on the server that's under heavier load. This is a DC and a file server supporting about 40 users.
    – red888
    Jun 20, 2015 at 0:16

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