How much memory will a Windows file-server be able to use effectively.

Posted by Zoredache on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Zoredache
Published on 2010-04-28T20:50:11Z Indexed on 2010/04/28 20:57 UTC
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In the near future we will be moving our fileserver to a newer box that will be running Windows 2008R2. I want to know how much memory Windows will be able to use for a system that is just a file-server.

In searching around I found an old document for Windows 2000 that mentions the maximum size of the file-system cache is 960MB. I suspect this limit no longer applies, but is there a new limit?

The file server will be just a standard Windows fileserver. It will have 1TB of attached storage. The large majority of the of the files accessed during the day are just typical Office documents. There are 80-100 people usually using the fileserver during a typical day. This system will only be used as a file server, it doesn't have any other roles.

  • In Windows 2008r2 is there any hard limits for the filesystem cache? What are they?
  • The server we will be re-using for this purpose currently has 4GB of memory, but it can be maxed out at 16GB. Is there any value in doing this for a Windows file-server?
  • Are there any performance counters can I look at on the existing 2003 fileserver that will tell me if adding more memory will be worthwhile.

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