Windows 2000 Performance Guide

Chapter 6. Memory Management and Paging

Windows 2000 is a demand paged, virtual memory operating system. It currently supports 32-bit virtual memory addresses on Intel-compatible processors. This chapter describes the virtual memory management features of Windows 2000 and its implications for performance monitoring and capacity planning. Because Windows 2000 runs on PC architectures that often have limited I/O bandwidth, making sure that there is ample physical memory is one of the most important configuration and tuning considerations.

The first section of this chapter provides an overview of the Windows 2000 Virtual Memory Manager. The second section describes the page replacement policies implemented in Windows 2000. The third section describes the memory management performance measurement data that Windows 2000 provides, and also discusses practical strategies for sizing and tuning Windows 2000 memory. In this chapter we also share our perspective on a number of hotly debated topics in Windows 2000 performance: how to tell when your system needs more RAM, how many paging files to define and where to place them, and whether or not you should let Windows 2000 extend your paging files automatically.

Virtual Memory

Random access memory ( RAM) is an essential element of your computer, and is used to store both code and data during program execution. Each memory location is unique, allowing the information stored in memory to be accessed directly and updated. Programs are loaded from ...