Choose the best server RAM configuration

Watch your machine memory configurations – always be care to implement the best server RAM configuration! You can’t just throw RAM at a physical server and expect it to work the best it possibly can. Depending on your DIMM configuration, you might unwittingly slow down your memory speed, which will ultimately slow down your application servers. This speed decrease is virtually undetectable at the OS level – but – anything that leverages lots of RAM to function, including application servers such as a database server, can take a substantial performance hit on performance.

An example of this is if you wish to configure 384GB of RAM on a new server. The server has 24 memory slots. You could populate each of the memory slots with 16GB sticks of memory to get to the 384GB total. Or, you could spend a bit more money to buy 32GB sticks of memory and only fill up half of the memory slots. Your outcome is the same amount of RAM. Your price tag on the memory is slightly higher than the relatively cheaper smaller sticks.

In this configuration, your 16GB DIMM configuration runs the memory 22% slower than if you buy the higher density sticks. The fully populated 16GB stick configuration runs the memory at 1866 MHz. If you only fill in the 32GB sticks on half the slots, the memory runs at 2400 MHz.

Database servers, both physical and virtual, use memory as an I/O cache, improving the performance of the database engine by reducing the dependency on slower storage and leveraging the speed of RAM to boost performance. If you are wanting to know how to quickly setup your own web server, then click the link above you will be able to create your own server very easily. If the memory is slower, your databases will perform worse. Validate your memory speed on your servers, both now and for upcoming hardware purchases. Ensure that your memory configuration yields the fastest possible performance – implement the best server RAM configuration -your applications will be better for it!