Important counters to watch for SQL Server memory utilization include counters from the SQL Server: Buffer Manager performance object and from SQL Server:Memory Manager:
- SQLServer-Buffer Manager—buffer cache hit ratio: This counter displays the ratio of how often the SQL Server can find the proper data in the cache when a query returns such data. If the data is not found in the cache, it has to be read from the disk. The higher the counter, the better the overall performance, since the memory access is usually faster compared to the disk subsystem.
- SQLServer-Buffer Manager—page life expectancy: This counter can measure how long a page can stay in the memory in seconds. The longer a page can ...