Wrong memory amount in Task Manager on DL 580 G2 running W2K Advanced

[Robert_128]

Today we have installed Windows 2000 Advanced Server on brand-new Prolinat DL 580 G2 Dual Xeon 1.6 GHz, 6 GB RAM. During starting ammount of memory detected is 6 144 MB. Task Manager shows that Total Phisical memory is 3 669 524 kB.
We tried other DIMM configuration in different Memory Board slots:
- 4 096 MB detected by BIOS; 3 833 364 kB on Task Manger
- 2 048 MB detected by BIOS; 3 833 364 kB on Task Manger
Memory Board was connected to the both slots and effects were the same.
Note, that 2 048 MB detected by BIOS is recognized in Task Manger correctly showing 2 096 660 kB.
Have you met such problem?

Robert Szczodrzynski
ITNS Poland

[Robert_128]

One information was wrong - we tried two different 4 096 MB (please refer to 2 048/3 833 364) memory configurations (4 x 1 GB and 8 x 512 MB). In both cases Task Manger shown 3 833 364 kB.

[Jakub Nowakowski]

Hello,

My name is Jakub. We are working with Robert together. I can answer all technical questions regarding this case.

We have DL 580 server with only one memory board.

The server was shipped with 4x512MB memory modules.

We are waitng for the second memory board (Hot-Plug Memory Expansion Board 203320-B21), but we have at this moment two additional memory kits:
2GB (PC1600 DDR SDRAM DIMM 4x512MB 202171-B21) and
4GB (PC1600 DDR SDRAM DIMM 4x1GB 202172-B21)

We have the following BIOS settings:

OS : Windows 2000/ .NET
Memory : Advanced ECC

We installed MS Windows 2000 Advanced Server (English) with SP3.

Because our custommer needs this server very urgently we decided not to wait for the second memory board to install all of 8GB RAM he needs.
From technical point of view we can achieve 6GB of RAM with single memory board and memory kits we have.

We installed 4GB memory kit in addition to shipped 2GB memory.

During start-up of the server we can see that detected memory is 6144MB - as we expected.

But under Windows 2000 Advanced Server in Task Manager reported Total Memory is 3669524 kB only!

We know that there are some problems with reporting over 10GB of RAM on Task Manager, and we checked just in case the Performance Monitor counters. But everything was confirmed. The operating system does not see 6GB of RAM.

We made some other tests. We changed the memory board slot, changed memory configuration on the board to 2GB and 4GB (4x1 and 8 x 512). The position of the board in memory board slot has nothing to do with results observed. The configuration of 4GB memory has nothing to do with reults observed. If there was 4GB RAM on the board we could see 4096MB on the BIOS and 3833364kB on the Task Manager!!! (Please note that it was more memory in Task Manager than in 6GB of RAM on the memory board case!!!).

Only in case of 2GB RAM on the memory board we observed results we expected:
2048MB RAM in BIOS, 2096660kB in Task Manager.

We have 4 disks on this server and two RAID-1 logical disks. On the first mirror we have OS Partition (13GB). On the second we have Local Data partition (35GB). Virtual memory is set either on the OS partition or on the Local Data partition. On both partitions we have page file: 3.5 GB each. It means we have 7GB of total virtual memory.

This server has also two Fibre Channel cards an will be a client of VA7100 system.

We have BIOS dated 22 July 2002.

Jakub

[MARTIN_67]

Hi,


Your problem is somewhat quite simple and complicated...

First of all you should use Physical Adress Extension (PAE) in your boot.ini

... /fastdetect /PAE

so you should have more than 4 GB

The second problem is quite annoying, by default these new servers use memory for the hot plug facilty !!

that is memory is used for two things :

- the chipset which is used for the multiprocessing (about 128 Mo i think)

- the hot plug facility (by default enabled and using 64 Mo by PCI bus => make 192 Mo )
( you can disabled this second one in the bios)

So you will see an amount of 6144 - 320 = 5824 Mo)
Or somewhat approaching ( i don't remember exactly the amount)

So don't expect to have all the memory you buy available!! (i know it's quite surprising , i was thinking the same!!)



Best Regards

(PS: excuse for my bad english)

[Robert_128]

Dear Martin,

Thank you veru much for your reply for our question. In the meantime we find out how to force W2K Advanced to see more memory than 4GB. We were very amazed that user have to do it manually - but what to do. It was our first experience with server running W2K Advanced equipped with more than 4 GB of RAM.

Kind regards

Robert
ITNS Poland Limited

[Michael Mannion]

Martin,

Can you direct me to any references describing in detail how much memory is used and why this memory is used by the multi-processing chipset and hot plug facility you cite in your response?

We are running into what I believe is the same issue on our ML570 and ML570G2 servers. Briefly, the correct amount of memory is reported by the BIOS at boot time, but the Task Manager reports either 256.7 or 512.7 MB less memory at run time.

This had been causing problems with an Oracle database I was configuring. With the information you provided I can work around the problem now, but I would like to understand it better in order to describe the issue for my client. Thank you, in advance.

-Michael