SQL memory limit for Veeam B&R server?

[Battlestorm]

Hi Guys,
I'm trying to find out if there are any set or suggested values for limiting the amount of ram the Veeam B&R database instance uses on small installations (2-3 backup jobs, ~2-8 VM's), no Enterprise manager installed.
The total database size is only 250MB on the machine i'm looking at and is using SQL 2014 SP1 express x64

So far I've had no issues setting the limit to 1GB of ram, but wanted to squeeze it down some more, has anyone tried 512MB or lower?

The reasons behind this, is that it's a low spec machine, has B&R installed, is the storage for the backups (running windows dedupe) and runs sure backup so there is a lot of demand for memory

regards,
Daniel

[PTide]

Hi Daniel,

As specified here the minimum amount of RAM for SQL express 2014 is 512MB. Add the 250Mb of your vbr database and you get somewhat similar to 768Mb which you can try to use but personally I would not recommend you set it any lower than that.

There is a pretty straight-forward explanaition on this topic in microsoft knowledge base:

"Setting max server memory to the minimum value can severely reduce SQL Server performance and even prevent it from starting."

and

"SQL Server is not guaranteed to allocate the amount of memory specified in min server memory. If the load on the server never requires allocating the amount of memory specified in min server memory, SQL Server will run with less memory."

Hope this helps.

Thank you.

[Battlestorm]

Hi Pavel,
in my case the SQL server would consume anything upto 3gb of ram, which isn't great.
I would have thought that the minimum memory needed for the installation and the memory restriction for the database instance wouldn't directly be related else Microsoft would allow restricting it down to 128mb

I've taken the plunge and am testing with setting the max server memory to 256mb, my backup, backup copy and surebackup jobs are all completing in the same time so I'm leaning towards this being stable for smaller installations.

regards,
Daniel

[PTide]

My mistake, Daniel - for some reason I assumed that the amount of RAM needed for the installation and the amount of RAM needed for proper MSSQL server functioning would be equal, I apologize for that.
Now, after you have pointed that those things are not directly related, It seems that if you set the limit slightly higher than the database size everything will be ok.

Please let me know about the results of your testing.

Thank you!

[Gostev]

Basically, SQL Server will use all the physical memory you throw at it. This is perfectly normal, is the right way to use the computer resources (why would you want the memory you have to be unused). Reducing memory should be just fine for smaller setups, as the load B&R puts on SQL Server is pretty light-weight. Thanks!

[frankive]

on a customers veeam backupserver with 32GB Ram, the sql server consumes 5-6 GB.
7 jobs with 8 VMs in each job.

Veeam 8 update 2a

The costumer wants to know if he safely can set max ram to 2 GB in this situation as he wants to have a little more ram for his surebackup. (I have already mentioned to him that he also can use his hyper-v host in production in non-production hours, but he wants to run all surebackup jobs on the veeam server itself.)

[Battlestorm]

So far so good, I’ve had no issues running the SQL instance restricted to 256mb
Running;
Veeam8 update2 (not the ‘a’ release)
No Enterprise manager
SQL 2014 SP1 express
Database file size totals are 250mb
Running 1 backup job with 4vm's
2x backup copy jobs
1x surebackup
windows dedupe

Frank, I’d check the database size as a first idea for a memory limit