SQL Server: Buffer Manager Object

The Buffer Manager object provides counters to monitor how Microsoft® SQL
Server™ uses both memory to store data pages, internal data structures, and the
procedure cache, and counters to monitor the physical I/O as SQL Server reads database
pages from and writes database pages to disk. Monitoring the memory used by SQL
Server can help determine, for example, if bottlenecks exist due to a lack of available
physical memory for storing frequently accessed data in cache, in which case SQL Server
must retrieve the data from disk. By monitoring memory, you can determine if query
performance can be improved by adding more memory or by making more memory
available to the data cache or SQL Server internal structures. Monitoring the physical I/O
is especially important in determining how often SQL Server needs to read data from
disk. Compared to other operations, such as memory access, physical I/O consumes a lot
of time. Minimizing physical I/O can improve query performance.
These are the SQL Server Buffer Manager counters.
SQL Server Buffer Manager Description
counters
Buffer Cache Hit Ratio Percentage of pages found in the buffer
cache without having to read from disk.
The ratio is the total number of cache
hits divided by the total number of
cache lookups since SQL Server was
started. After a long period of time, the
ratio moves very little. Because reading
from the cache is much less expensive
than reading from disk, you want this
ratio to be high. Generally, you can
increase the buffer cache hit ratio by
increasing the amount of memory
available to SQL Server.
Cache Size (pages) Size of the procedure cache (in pages).
Includes all instances of cache sizes
monitored for different types of plans
under the Cache Manager object in
addition to pages currently assigned to
the procedure cache but not used by any
plan.
Checkpoint Writes/sec Number of pages flushed to disk per
second by a checkpoint or other
operations that cause all dirty pages to
be flushed to disk.
Committed Pages Number of buffer pages committed.
ExtendedMem Cache Hit Percentage of page requests satisfied
Ratio from the extended memory cache.
ExtendedMem Cache Number of pages migrated into the
Migrations/sec extended memory cache region per
 second.
ExtendedMem Requests/sec Number of requests for pages from the
large memory region per second.
Free Buffers Number of free buffers available.
Lazy Writer Buffers/sec Number of buffers examined by the
lazy writer per second. As buffers are
needed to read new pages into the
cache, the lazy writer buffer pointer is
advanced through the cache. Each
buffer is examined to determine if they
have been touched since the last time
they were checked, and for dirty pages
that can be written to disk.
Lazy Writes/sec Number of buffers written per second
by the buffer manager’s lazy writer.
The lazy writer is a system process
whose main task is to flush out batches
of dirty, aged buffers (buffers that
contain changes that must be written
back to disk before the buffer can be
reused for a different page) and make
them available to user processes. The
lazy writer eliminates the need to
perform checkpoints frequently for the
purpose of creating available buffers.
Page Reads/sec Number of physical database page
reads that are issued per second. This
statistic displays the total number of
physical page reads across all
databases. Because physical I/O is
expensive, you may be able to
minimize the cost, either by using a
larger data cache, intelligent indexes,
more efficient queries, or by changing
the database design.
Page Requests/sec Number of requests for buffer pages per
second. A page request is a logical read.
If the page is found in the cache, there
will be no physical I/O associated with
the request.
Page Writes/sec Number of database page writes that are
issued per second. Page writes are
generally expensive. Reducing page-
write activity is important for optimal
tuning. One way to do this is to ensure
that you do not run out of free buffers
 in the free buffer pool. If you do, page
writes will occur while waiting for an
unused cache buffer to flush.
Readahead Pages/sec Number of requests per second to
asynchronously prefetch pages before
they are actually encountered. Provides
a general idea of how busy read-ahead
is in terms of actual physical I/O.
Reserved Page Count Number of buffer cache reserved pages.
Stolen Page Count Number of buffer cache pages stolen to
satisfy other server memory requests.

See Also

Server Memory Options SQL Server: Cache Manager Object

Pages and Extents  

  

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