excessive page file usage on 16GB 64-bit system, in the x64 Terminal Server / Citrix forum on BrianMadden.com

We run CPS 4.5 64-bit on Windows 2003 64-bit, 16GB memory. Although we have 16GB memory we see that only 5GB of real memory is used and 3GB of page file. As we set the page file size to 4GB, we receive the error "Windows - Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low : Your system is low on virtual memory.".
I don't get it. With 16GB I expected Windows to make full use of all aavailable memory without using the pag file. This is the general consencus from all topics I read on the internet. Some even say that with 16GB no page file should be required.
So what can cause this huge page file usage?

Large Page Support for 64-bit Windows
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/itss/docs/oracle/10g/win.101/b10113/ap_64bit.htm

Thanks, but this is for Oracle only....

When do you see this message and where (event log or popup)? We have just started running PS4.5 on 64-bit machines with 16GB of RAM. We tried 32 and 16 GB pagefiles and found that as much as 10GB of pagefile will be reported in use (task manager) while at the same time we have 10GB of free physical RAM. We thought that changing the pagefile to 4GB might force it to use physical but it sounds like you are having some issues with that. It just seems a bit ridiculous to continue with the old 1.5 or 2 X physical RAM for pagefile in the new age of 64-bit computing. It won't be long before we are talking about machines with 64, 128, 256 GB of RAM. Are we really going to use 512GB pagefiles?

That is interesting, I'd like to see how many 32 bit apps are running and how much memory each of them is using.

Process Explorer from Sysinternals/Microsoft would be a good start. It sounds like you are running in to some 32bit address limitations on your 64bit system.

Well, we "solved" it. We disabled the page file altogether, thereby forcing Windows to use internal mem only. This has been running for a week now and all is fine. We'll probably adjust all servers and disable the page file on all servers.

Walter... Can you give us an update? How is performance running with 16GB RAM and no page file? I am in the same boat. In my 4.0 x64 farm, I do not have this problem... only with 4.5.

Is it Citrix? Is it Microsoft?

I'd really like to know if this resolved anything long term as we are going through the exact same thing right now.

Hi all,

Actually I would recommend against not having a page file. Windows is going to page, it is the nature of the beast. In fact just opening a file causes windows to page it in to memory. You could actually lose performance by not having a page file. Since disk space is so cheap, create multiple page files and you will see a considerable difference in performance since windows uses part of the page file as a cache.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555741

--Mike

We have Three 64bit server with 64 GB RAM 4 Quad Core Processor and we have published MS Outlook 2003 it take only 180 users per server. we are not using pagefile. whereas HP BL380 G3 Server with 8 GB RAM dual processor taking 65 user without any performance drawbacks