SQL Server Paging of Memory Identification - PowerShell

This blog and powershell script was a fall out of that engagement.


param (
    [string]$SqlServerName = "localhost"
)

Add-Type -Path "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\130\SDK\Assemblies\Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo.dll"

$SqlServer = New-Object Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server($SqlServerName)

foreach ($LogArchiveNo in ($SqlServer.EnumErrorLogs() | Select-Object -ExpandProperty ArchiveNo)) {
    $SqlServer.ReadErrorLog($LogArchiveNo) |
        Where-Object {$_.Text -like "*process memory has been paged out*"}
}

The output of this script would look like below:

Why is this important?

If there is excessive memory pressure on SQL Server’s memory allocations causing memory to get paged out to disk, that could be a potentially large performance impact as it invites I/O latency to memory access. It is best practice to ensure that there is enough physical memory on the machine, as well as a well-designed memory infrastructure from SQL Server so that there isn’t overcommitting of memory in order to ensure that paging is not excessive. It is recommended that reevaluation of memory allocations and/or available physical memory is taken into account in order to relieve memory pressure for the current SQL Server instance.