Hello All!

Recently I’ve installed SQL 2005 Workgroup edition on SBS 2003 R2 box that
is also running Exchange, configured it - most of the settings I left by
default, except the Server Memory Options settings: I configured the MAX to
3GB.
And here is the weird behavior: when the user, for example, releases accrued
receipts (apparently it is a very resource consuming task in our finance
software), the server performance reduces noticeably (imagine yourself
working on windows XP SP3 with 64MB of RAM) and it is because the SQL server
is starting to utilize the virtual memory instead of RAM. (To figure that out
I ran Performance Monitor and the Avg.Disk Queue Length counter was close to
a 100, when the processor remained almost idle and I still have 1 GB of
available RAM)
And here is the thing: While the release operation is in progress, I go to
the Server Memory configuration screen, change the MIN setting from 0 to 2GB,
hit OK and the server speeds up to the level where it is supposed to be. Next
time the user starts releasing other stuff, it slows down again due to the
same reason. And I go back to the Server Memory configuration screen, change
again the MIN setting, for example, back to 0 and it triggers the server to
speed up again and the Avg.Disk Queue Length counter in Performance Monitor
goes from a 100 to 8-10 - where it’s supposed to be.
In other words, whenever the SQL freaks out, I have to “make” it to use RAM
memory by changing MIN/MAX values in Server Memory configuration screen which
is “slightly” not convenient for the SQL administrators.

When users input data, run reports the server performance meets expectations.
Thanks in in advance!

Server hardware configuration:
2 x 4 3GHz processors
4 GB RAM and I it always has about 1GB of available memory.
6 SAS in RAID10