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Measures reported by PageFileTest
When the load imposed by applications and services running on a server
nears the amount of installed RAM, additional storage is necessary. The page file serves as
the temporary store on disk for memory that cannot be accommodated in the physical RAM. Since
it is frequently accessed for storing and retrieving data that is needed for virtual memory
access by application, the location and sizing of the page files can have a critical impact on
server's performance. Ideally, the server operating system and the page file should be
available on different drives for optimal performance. Splitting the page file across
different drives can improve performance further.
A rule of thumb in sizing the page file is to set the maximum size of the page file to 1.5 times
the available RAM. While this works well for systems with smaller physical memory, for other
systems, the optimal page file size has to be determined based on experience using the system and
studying the typical workload.
The PageFileTest tracks the usage of each of each of the page files on a Windows server. Note that
this test is available for Windows servers only.
| Measurement |
Description |
Measurement
Unit |
Interpretation |
| Current_usage |
The current usage of a
page file
|
Percent |
This metric should be
less than 90%. If the page file does not have additional space, additional users/processes
cannot be supported and system performance will suffer. To improve performance, consider
resizing the page file. Microsoft Windows allows a minimum and maximum size of the page
file to be specified. If the system has sufficient disk space, consider setting the page
file to start out at the maximum size (by using the same value for the minimum and maximum
sizes), so that system resources are not spent growing the page file size when there is a
virtual memory shortage.
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