Ssms Not Releasing System Memory

I just started at a new office as a Data Analyst. The job entails upgrading client systems from our dbase platform to our new RDBMS. The actual conversion is handled by some in-hou

Solution 1:

SQL Server will grab and keep all memory that you let it. If you don't want it to use 15.3 GB of memory, you need to change the setting so it only grabs X GB.

You can do this by right clicking the instance in the object explorer, click on Server Properties, and change the Maximum server memory under the Memory tab. It is generally a good idea to leave at lest 1 - 2 GB for the operating system, and then more if you have anything else running on the server (you should avoid running other stuff on the server, if possible).

Solution 2:

SQL by design wants to use as much memory as it can get. If you wish to limit that, you can do so from the server properties and limit it how many GBs its allowed to consume.

Solution 3:

DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS clears all the clean buffers from the buffer pool. That won't help you.

You need to understand that SSMS isnt eating your memory, the sqlserver service is. SQL server will expand it's memory footprint as much as you will allow it. If you have 32GB and you say it can use 32GB then it will allocate as much as it can.

Here's a great article on DBA stack exchange regarding max server memory: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/47431/why-is-sql-server-consuming-more-server-memory