(Look in the Misconceptions blog category for the rest of the month's posts and check out the 60-page PDF with all the myths and misconceptions blog posts collected together: CommonSQLServerMyths.pdf (732.96 kb))

Myth #5: AWE must be enabled on 64-bit servers

FALSE

(This one was suggested by fellow-MVP Jonathan Kehayias (blog|twitter))

There's a *huge* amount of confusion about AWE settings, locked pages, and what works/doesn't work, and what's required/not required on 32-bit and 64-bit servers, and in which editions.

In a nutshell:

• On 64-bit systems (2005+):
  • AWE is not required (and in fact enabling it does nothing)
  • Turning on the "Locked Pages in Memory" privilege prevents the buffer pool memory (and anything that uses single-page-at-a-time memory allocations) from being paged out
  • When the "Locked Pages in Memory" privilege is set, SQL Server uses the Windows AWE API to do memory allocations as it's a little bit faster
  • "Locked Pages in Memory" is supported by Standard and Enterprise editions (see this blog post for how to enable it in Standard edition)

• On 32-bit systems (2005+):
  • AWE is required to make use of extended virtual address space
  • The "Locked Pages in Memory" privilege must be enabled before AWE can be enabled
  • AWE is supported by Standard and Enterprise editions

No surprise that it's a bit confusing!

My good friend Bob Ward from CSS wrote a very detailed FAQ blog post that explains all of this - see Fun with Locked Pages, AWE, Task Manager, and the Working Set…

Tune in tomorrow to see what myth is next up for debunking!