sql server - SSMS not releasing system memory

Question

I just started at a new office as a Data Analyst. The job entails upgrading client systems from our dbase platform to our new RDBMS. The actual conversion is handled by some in-house software that is a black box to me but at the end of the conversion my system memory usage is maxed out ~15.3 of 16GB. I was told to just restart my computer but it seems like there must be a better way (hopefully that doesn't involve fixing the software since that is out of scope for me).

I found the question at the link below but running DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS doesn't seem to work. Restarting the SQL instance works but that interrupts all the databases on the instance. Is there another way to release the memory?

SQL Server clear memory

We use both ssms2008r2 and smss2012.

Thanks

Answer 1

SQL Server will grab and keep all memory that you let it. If you don't want it to use 15.3 GB of memory, you need to change the setting so it only grabs X GB.

You can do this by right clicking the instance in the object explorer, click on Server Properties, and change the Maximum server memory under the Memory tab. It is generally a good idea to leave at lest 1 - 2 GB for the operating system, and then more if you have anything else running on the server (you should avoid running other stuff on the server, if possible).