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Windows 2012 server out of memory, nonpaged pool size big

I'm running a Windows 2012 RDS guest on a Hyper-V host.
Windows 2012 RDS has 12GB memory and 4 vCPU's.
Only 7 users, primarily using Office 2007 SP3.

After a few days the Windows 2012 RDS becomes almost unresponsive. At that moment 99% of the 12GB memory is used. When I look at RamMap (see screen1.jpg), I can clearly see that the nonpaged pool is using 52% of the 12GB of memory. I think 6,1GB is too much, as the usage on similar setups are much much lower. I have attached a dump from poolmon (dump01.txt) showing the nonpaged pool.

Where to start?
C--temp2-screen1.JPG
C--temp2-dump01.txt

Dan McFadden

In 64bit OS, the non-paged-pool memory can hit as much as128GB RAM if available. Here's the defacto standard explanation of paged pool and nonpaged pool RAM:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/markrussinovich/archive/2009/03/26/3211216.aspx

Now, have you established a baseline of a typical user's resource utilization? Minimum guestimate goes something like:

( #-of-users * 64) + 2000 = required RAM in GB for general use.

reference link: http://blogs.technet.com/b/iftekhar/archive/2010/02/10/rds-hardware-sizing-and-capacity-planning-guidance.aspx

Are there any event log entries associated with resource exhaustion? Are all your system drivers updated? OS fully patched? Are your users using printers during there sessions? Are the print drivers up-to-date?

reference link: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/971a6470-7e5c-4bd6-85bb-82228aa7c55c/rds-insufficient-system-resources-exist-to-complete-the-requested-service-for-users-ntuserdat?forum=winserverTS

My guess is that your user sessions are probably running between 0.5GB to 1GB of RAM each during use. The system is then pulling as much RAM as it can to handle pooled memory. At 0.5GB each session plus OS, your looking at 5.5GB which works out pretty close to your 12GB on the server.

I would look at the last article link above and consider a few of the recommendations there. I would also consider adding more RAM to the server.

I highly recommend doing some performance monitoring to try to develop a baseline for resource utilization. This will help in determining if your server is correctly sized for your usage scenario.

Dan

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nazg82

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Philip Elder

What A/V product caused the problem please?

nazg82

ASKER

Vipre Antivirus Business Premium.
We replaced it with Webroot endpoint protection.

nazg82

ASKER

We did some extra research by creating a memory dump manually and debug the information. All was pointing to the antivirus software. We removed the antivirus software and replaced it with another solution.

Philip Elder

Just a thought but we put A/V clients on endpoints where users work not on servers. Why double scan plus all of the exceptions that need to be made for various server workloads?