By Terry Engelstad
MCP, MCSE, CCNA, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP
AIS Network Operations Manager
If you are not familiar with how SQL Server works, you should know that it does, in fact, use memory for caching of data. If you don’t give it enough memory, then it won’t cache enough data. If you don’t cache enough of the right data, then you must go to disk to get it. If you have to go to disk to get it, then you are making excessive trips to the SAN to retrieve data, thereby reducing the overall efficiency to everybody on the SAN.
I’ve done a couple hundred installations of SharePoint, and I am definitely a believer in “more is better.” When it comes to SharePoint, you absolutely must give it memory – and lots of it. You cannot get away with shorting memory and disk space.
If you really want to tick off a customer, take a SharePoint Site that has a reasonable amount of traffic and start reducing the amount of memory SQL Server has to work with. See how long it takes for that customer to start complaining. It won’t take long.