Paging file alternatives for systems with large amounts of memory

As a follow-up to last week's tip here is a way to alleviate paging file memory usage in Windows 2000:

From Inside Windows 2000 Server by William Boswell, New Riders, 2000.

The option to dump system memory to disk in the event of a stop error can force you to set aside very large chunks of disk real estate if you have lots of memory. Instead, you can configure the system to dump only the contents of kernel memory, not application memory. Do this as follows:

Configuring the system to dump only the contents of the Kernel Memory

1. Open the System Applet in Control Panel.
2. Select the Advanced Tab.
3. Click the Startup and Recovery
4. Uncheck the Write Debugging Information option.

This saves considerable disk space and gives Microsoft technical support a more compact file to examine in the event of a crash.

Microsoft recommends a paging file of 1GB for a system with 2GB of RAM and a paging file of 2GB for a system of 4GB of RAM. Putting this amount of memory on a standard Windows 2000 server is not very common, but Advanced Server and Datacenter Server are likely to ship on some very big iron. The Data General AViiON 25000, for example, supports 64 Xeon processors and 64GB of system memory.

For more information on Inside Windows 2000 Server go to http://www2.newriders.com/cfm/prod_book.cfm?RecordID=178 or http://www.informit.com/product/1562059297/.