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I am running SQL2012 merge replication on a netbook using SQL Express as a subscriber. The netbook has 1GB of RAM.

The replication process works quite well, but it is when it comes to applying the prc files from the snapshot where the problem begins.

As I understand the prc files are the stored procedures for each table. At the start the prc files are applied fast, but further along it seems to slow down more for each one. At the start it seems to take less than 1 second for each, but now it is up to about 10 - 20 seconds for each.

If I look back when I subscribed to the same publication on a PC (not a netbook) the prc files each applied in less than a second, and there was no slowdown over time.

The SQL server is using about 453 Mb of memory. It has increased since applying the prc files.

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If you haven't configured the Max Memory setting, the 1 GB system is probably starving for memory and swapping to disk as a result. – Jon Seigel Jul 24 '12 at 14:26
So what is a fair setting for max memory? If I set it too low won't it then cause more swapping than now? Isn't the memory management in SQL server supposed to be smart enough not to cause swapping by allocating under the threshold for swapping? – peter Jul 24 '12 at 22:31
It's really tough with only 1 GB of memory (can you upgrade? RAM is insanely cheap right now). On a server I normally recommend reserving at least 2 GB for the operating system only. I would say look at how much memory is free after a clean boot, and set the max server memory setting to that. (Note: I don't recommend setting the max memory setting less than 256 MB -- if you have to go there, lower the number in smallish increments, say 32 MB at a time.) – Jon Seigel Jul 24 '12 at 22:39
The difference is that SQL Server knows which pages (data, plan cache, etc.) in memory is old and can be bumped, versus it thinking that it can allocate memory from the system up to the physical memory limit, which will kick Windows stuff out of memory, which is really bad. – Jon Seigel Jul 24 '12 at 22:40
It comes down to clients whether they want to upgrade RAM, so that would be the ideal solution. I still have to look at the worst case scenario though. Your comments are very helpful. Thanks. – peter Jul 24 '12 at 22:59

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