Strange behavioud of SQL Server causes Veeam to have bad performances [#07338065]

[tinto1970]

Good day, today I expericend a very strange thing, hope some one has already seen this and can give an help.
Scenario: Veeam VBR 12 last release, SQL 2012 (commercial) on the same machine; no limit in RAM occupation set.
Fact: we ere expanding the backup\disk\Oracle RMAN tree: the operation was very slow, SQL took all the system RAM and the console fired and error (i could not copy or screeshot it).

We rebooted the machine and Veeam GUI was veeery slow again. We noticed that SQL server was using 600-800 MBytes RAM only. We tried to reset the SQL limit setting 0 miimum ram and 80 GB maximum ram used.
After that we rebooted again and the situation did not change. The support suggested us a registry key to increase the sql timeout to partially workaround the effects of this very slow SQL performances.

Sure the root cause is SQL not using RAM he needs. How could be investigated? I didn't find any answer in the net, yet.

Thanks in advance.

[mjr.epicfail]

You should also create a Veeam supportcase with all the logs.

[david.domask]

Hi Alessandro,

Thank you for the detailed post and for the case number, and sorry to hear about the challenges -- reviewing the case, I understand that right now there is a plan to do some troubleshooting during a maintenance window a bit later to avoid disruptions, so please continue to work with Support, as there are some additional steps they can suggest after the planned work during the maintenance.

I'm not aware of any immediate issues that would match the behavior you're describing, so I think let's allow Support time to review the situation after the planned maintenance.

Just out of curiosity, is 2012 the only commercial version that is possible? From my experience with MSSQL and issues like this in Veeam, 2012's age and lack of optimizations tended to be fairly impactful, and upgrading even to just MSSQL 2016 showed immediate benefits, but I understand with commercial licenses this may not be feasible at this time, but I would advise it if it's feasible for you.

[tinto1970]

yes we will work on that and potentially migrate our server to a new Machine.
I agree with you about the "vintage" (but still supported) version of SQL, when I was an end customer I was used to keep it always up to date

Anyway it's really so strange that SQL has stopped eating RAM: he usually loves to eat as many ram as he can
I wanted to share this and hopefully find someone who had the same issue and solved it... who knows, maybe it's a stupid thing.

Best regards

[SnakeSK]

Since you have paid sql license you are probsbly using locked pages, that would coincide with behaviour your are seeing. You have to look at the commit section in the performance monitor not in the task manager