Configure Windows Server to Be an Application Server

Windows memory manager divides up system memory into three different pools described in Table 7-1.

Table 7-1 Windows Server Memory Shares

Pool	Percent of Total Memory
Kernel and other system services	9%
File Cache	41%
Paged Memory	50%

Windows Server memory manager tries to balance each application's usage of memory by dynamically paging memory between physical RAM and a virtual memory paging file. If an application is particularly memory-intensive (like Oracle Database) or if a large number of applications are running concurrently, then combined memory requirements of the applications may exceed physical memory capacity.

The large proportion of memory reserved for file caching (41%) can be quite beneficial to file and print servers. But it may not be advantageous to application servers that often run memory-intensive network applications. A Windows Server file cache is particularly unnecessary for Oracle Database, which performs its own caching through System Global Area.

You can reset the Windows Server memory model from the default file and print server, with its large file cache, to a network applications model, with a reduced file cache and more physical memory available for Oracle Database.

See Also: Your operating system documentation for instructions

This is harder in a cluster, as you cannot access these programs from the control panel.

So, if you have 14GB of memory, and the system is reserving 41% for file cache, this means that there is 5.74 reserved.  Your application can only use 8.26, 8.26 is reduced by 2 for the OS – and this might tell you why you are constantly paging!