How to tell if AWE is actually working?

[mvirta@olgc.ca]

How can I verify that AWE is actually working? The server is SQL 2000
EE on W2KAS with the /pae switch.

I've allocated 5000Mb (5Gb) for SQL but Performance monitor says the
working set for the sqlservr process is only 91Mb (it started out at
around 87Mb a couple of days ago and seems to be creeping up).
"committed bytes" for the server is about 5.6 Gb out of ~6Gb so there's
a whole pile of memory going somewhere.

The error log says "Address Windowing Extensions enabled" (sp_config
indicates a "1" for this as well). The "max server memory" item says
5000 Mb for its "running" value so within the SQL Server things appear
to be correct.

The server does seem to be performing better but it's hard to decide if
that's because of AWE or just the fact that it was rebooted (it hadn't
been in a while).


- Martin

[Anith Sen]

Re: How to tell if AWE is actually working?

Check your AWE counters under Buffer Manager object in the Performance
monitor. You should see the memory maps & unmaps going on, if it is set up
right and is being utilized.

--
Anith

[mvirta@olgc.ca]

Re: How to tell if AWE is actually working?

Anith Sen wrote:[color=blue]
> Check your AWE counters under Buffer Manager object in the[/color]
Performance[color=blue]
> monitor. You should see the memory maps & unmaps going on, if it is[/color]
set up[color=blue]
> right and is being utilized.
>
> --
> Anith[/color]

Thanks, I tried that but the SQL perf counters don't show up in
Performance Monitor. There is an error message in the log: "Performanc e
monitor shared memory setup failed: -1".

I recall that this is a known problem that can be worked around by
stopping perfmon and bouncing the server but unfortunately this is a
Production server so that's not a trivial matter).

Is there another way to verify AWE is working?

- Martin

[mvirta@olgc.ca]

Re: How to tell if AWE is actually working?

To anyone still interested in this thread:

I found a post from the esteemed Kalen Delaney in
microsoft.publi c.sqlserver.ser ver that referred to an excerpt from
"Inside SQL Server 2000's Memory Management Facilities" by Ken
Henderson of Microsoft...

"Note None of the tools you typically use to inspect application
memory use (Task Manager, Perfmon/Sysmon, etc.) show the amount of AWE
memory used by individual processes. There's no indication of the
amount of AWE memory used by each process, nor is this memory included
in the working set size reported for a given process."


This is exactly what I was concerned about (the working set size for
SQL Server wasn't getting bigger than 92Mb even though I've allocated
5Gb to it).

It seems this "under-reporting" of memory usage is just a quirk of AWE.
I'll just have to believe the SQL Server error log when it reports that
AWE is enabled (until I get the freaking SQL perfmon counters fixed so
that I can actually inspect the AWE-related counters!).

- Martin