I bow to your superior knowledge...J I came across this. Well it turns out that the max server memory setting in MSDE (and SQL) defaults to 2147483647Mb!! A little more digging and I found a SQL script to change this memory. Copy the following into notepad and save as sqlmemorylimit.sql . USE master EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1 RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE USE master EXEC sp_configure 'max server memory (MB)', 64 RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE USE master EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 0 RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE With this SQL script saved we can now run it with the following command. osql -E -S servername\MSFW -i c:\sqlmemorylimit.sql This will set the memory limit for MSDE to 64MB. Now you are probably thinking that 64MB is awefully low, and you are right. The box in question only had 256MB ram, however I would suggest to set this to 1/4 of the total amount of physical memory. As an example, if you have 1GB of memory, set this to 256MB. ________________________________ From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Thomas W Shinder Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 11:00 AM To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isapros] Re: MSDE Ram Rule of Thumb Hi Steve, There is a way to set a limit on the MSDE process, but I didn't think there was a requirement to do so. My impression is that the SBS admins think that MSDE is a runaway process because it does use available memory, so it looks like it taking too much. But I think it releases it to other processes that require it. At least that's what I understand at this point. Maybe someone can prove it otherwise. Thomas W Shinder, M.D. Site: www.isaserver.org <http://www.isaserver.org/> Blog: http://blogs.isaserver.org/shinder/ Book: http://tinyurl.com/3xqb7 MVP -- ISA Firewalls ________________________________ From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Moffat Sent: Monday, May 22, 2006 8:43 AM To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isapros] Re: MSDE Ram Rule of Thumb As far as I know, it will release RAM when another app / process requires it. I don't think there is any way to modify the behavior. S ________________________________ From: isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:isapros-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Amy Babinchak Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 8:57 PM To: isapros@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [isapros] MSDE Ram Rule of Thumb In the SBS world when we switch to MSDE logging in ISA, the MSDE service can end up taking all available ram unless we go in and tell it otherwise. Is there a rule of thumb for setting the ram on the MSDE instance for ISA? Something like X requests per minute = X mb ram? thanks, Amy