there's plenty of articles that explain the use of the /3GB startup switch. The general explanation is ..
Regardless of the amount of physical memory in your system, Windows uses a virtual address space of 4 GB, with 2 GB allocated to user-mode processes (for example, applications) and 2 GB allocated to kernel-mode processes (for example, the operating system and kernel-mode drivers). On systems that have 1 GB or more of physical memory, these two startup switches can be used to allocate more memory to applications (3 GB) and less memory to the operating system (1 GB).
Ok - that's not hard to understand. ... ... but is this a good thing for a Sql Server? Is the answer dependant upon how much total memory exists in the server?
For this discussion can we relate any answers to
- 4 GB ram
- 16 GB ram
... with a server containing Windows 2008 standard x64 + Sql Server 2008 x64. I hope the # of processors don't impact the answer :P
So i suppose i'm asking, does Sql Server require a lot of ram for OS + kernal mode drivers?