Windows – Memory usage on Server 2008 keeps increasing without showing what is using the RAM

I found this article today which discusses in detail locked pages, AWE, and 64 bit systems. http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2009/09/11/fun-with-locked-pages-awe-task-manager-and-the-working-set.aspx

One of the bullet points (#3) is title "Why is task manager not showing all of the memory allocated for SQL Server"

It's a very nice explanation. In the end the reason this doesn't show up is that sql server has "locked" those pages in memory. Locked pages are NOT part of the working set so they won't appear in Task manager or even appear as part of the applications memory set.

If you run select * from sys.dm_os_process_memory you can see the locked_page_allocations_kb field which will tell you how much RAM sql server has allocated in those pages.

115982 is a very similar question

Is this a 64bit server - do you have the lock pages in memory local policy enabled?

the most likely reason is that this SQL Server 64bit instance is using “locked pages” as I’ve described in an earlier question. Notice the name on the Task Manager column is called Memory (Private Working Set). Remember we also said that if SQL Server 64bit instances use “locked pages” this memory would not be part of the working set (because remember AWE APIs are used on 64bit to “lock” pages and that memory is not part of the working set). So since the locked pages are not part of the working set, they won’t appear in this column in Task Manager. On the Task Manager for Windows Server 2003, this column is called “Mem Usage” but it also reflects the working set of the process.

Here is an article that explains it in depth

You can also view the counters in SQL

SELECT
    object_name
   ,Counter_name
   ,cntr_value
   ,ROUND(( cntr_value * 8192.0 ) / 1048576, 0) AS cntr_value_MB
FROM
    sys.dm_os_performance_counters
WHERE
    object_Name LIKE '%Buffer Manager%'
    AND RTRIM(counter_name) IN ( 'Free pages', 'Total pages',
                                 'Database pages' ) 
UNION SELECT
    object_name
   ,Counter_name
   ,cntr_value
   ,ROUND(( cntr_value / 1024 ), 0) AS cntr_value_MB
FROM
    sys.dm_os_performance_counters
WHERE
    counter_name IN ( 'Target Server Memory (KB)',
                      'Total Server Memory (KB)' )