I have been running into an issue lately where SQL Server 2012 uses 5+GB of RAM immediately at startup.  I have our windows service set to automatic startup.  This happens even if our windows service that accesses the database is disabled.  Since our service and SQL Server are hosted on the same server which only has about 12GB of RAM in some instances, our application performance suffers because we are using very close to 100% of our RAM.  I am aware that we can limit SQL Server's memory usage, but we have never had to do this in the past with SQL Server 2008 R2.  If I restart SQL Server it seems to sit steadily at 1-2 GB.  Additionally, if I change the startup of the SQL Server service to start as Automatic (delayed start) the process also sits around 1-2GB.  Any insight as to why this happens would be very helpful.  The system that this runs on is running Windows 7.

You need to capture memory status in SQL to see which clerk is consuming memory.  sys.dm_os_memory_clerks should provide you details about them.

This could be lack of maintenance.

rebuild indexes on schedule basis.

Like Balmukund mentioned you need to analyse your system memory. If caching is not happening then system need more memory to process.

Check the event viewer that will provide the more insight. 

Thanks for the suggestions guys.  After running through all of this with the client I was not able to discern where the RAM was being used.  I had then run windows updates and and upgrade to service pack 2 and this resolved that issue.

• Marked as answer by dansaintg16 9 hours 42 minutes ago