Specialized Performance Troubleshooting (Part 2: How to troubleshoot Memory problems in SQL Server)

This week we are looking into a very common performance issue of busy SQL Server instances: Lack of Memory.

There are various lack of memory issues and so I usually prefer to follow the below steps to identify exactly what the problem is:

I hope the above decision tree explains well how to detect and resolve memory problems.

 Two other counters I like to use as complimentary indicators are:
- SQL Server: Buffer Manager: Page Reads/sec: Big values (e.g. 200 or more) could indicate insufficient memory allocated to the SQL Server process
- SQL Server: Buffer Manager: Page Writes/sec: Big values (e.g. 200 or more) could indicate insufficient memory allocated to the SQL Server process

Next week I will discuss about detecting and explaining storage issues.