SQL Server 2005 Memory Explosions

Question

We have the following configuration:
ESXi 5.1.0 running on three clustered Dell 710 servers
vCenter Server 5.1.0
The clustered servers have a total of 88G of RAM
SQL Server 2005 x86 running on a virtual Server 2008 R2 x64. All databases run fine for several days with memory usage seeming at ~25%. Suddenly, the memory consumption
shoots up to ~98% and we have to reboot the server. This is based on information from the task manager and the measurements in vSphere Client. I understand that the task manager is not an accurate measurement when AWE is active but that’s the best I’ve got
at the moment.
Here's what we've done thus far:
Looked through the logs on the SQL Server and found the following:
In the System log, Resource-Exhaustion-Detected appeared at the same time but the highest memory consumption was services.exe at 125MB. Doesn’t seem to be the culprit.
In the Applications log, started getting MSSQLSERVER errors indicating ‘The Server was unable to load the SSL provider needed to login.’ These errors persisted through the downtime.
In the SQL Server Log File Viewer, we see the following errors, though I’m not sure that they are at all related:
A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 0 seconds. Working set (KB): 4464, committed (KB)
66976, memory utilization: 6%
(About 4.5 hours later) Warning: the available page file has dropped below 4Mb. It is at this point – seemingly – that the memory usage has jumped up to near 100%.
The virtual server has 8G of RAM allocated. However, within the vSphere Client, the Memory Granted and the Memory Consumed seem to be at the same value…meaning that
the consumed value seems to be at 100% under normal operating conditions. Not sure why that is.
If anyone has any recommendations or areas to look, we would certainly appreciate your assistance! Thanks in advance.
Tony

Answer 1

I thank you guys so much for the rapid response! Please forgive the delayed response. All of this is on a DoD network and I cannot post to blogs on government machines. I have to go to a private
machine. Below is the information you asked for:
The Max Server Memory is 5.0GB and the Min Server Memory is 0.0GB
I have PerfMon currently running to try and capture as much information as possible.
We are getting a few other errors in the SQL Log that has given me some concern:
Failed Virtual Allocation Bytes: FAIL_VIRTUAL_RESERVE 65536
Memory Manager  VM Reserverd = 3673288 KB  VM Committed = 55688 KB AWE Allocated = 0 KB  Reserved Memory = 1024
KB  Reserved Memory In Use = 0 KB
There is also a series of MEMORYCLERK and CACHESTORE errors following
The Server was unable to load the SSL provider needed to login. SSL is used…
o   
I presume that this is due to the lack of memory to process these SSL request.
There are indeed several Error: 701, Severity: 17, State: 123
Below is the system information from SQL Server 2005:
Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio                   9.00.5324.00
Microsoft Analysis Services Client Tools                       2005.090.5324.00
Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC)                6.1.7601.17514 (win7sp1_rtm.101119-1850)
Microsoft MSXML                                             
            3.0 6.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer                                         
8.0.7601.17514
Microsoft .NET Framework                                          
2.0.50727.5477
Operating System                                           
            6.1.7601
I run a query SELECT SERVERPROPERTY(‘edition’); and it shows ‘Standard Edition’ rather than ‘Standard Edition (64-bit).’
We are using Windows Server 2008 R2. I don’t believe that there was an x86 version released but I could be wrong.
I’ve actually looked at enabling the LPIM but we are on a domain that we have no control over and there are GPOs that make it very difficult if not impossible to gpedit but that is something
we can certainly look into with the domain owners if you think it might help.
I just ran the following script in SQL:
Exec sp_configure ‘AWE’
The response is  name – awe enabled, minimum – 0, maximum – 1, config_value – 0, run_value – 0
There is no third party software on this server.
The Max Server Memory is set to 5GM
Again, I do appreciate all of your help. Please let me know if I can provide anything further.
Tony