Did anyone use trace flag 2551 before? It claims a full-filtred memory dump will be generated on fatal errors.

Does anyone know how big the dump files are compare to the size of the server memory? I am hesitating to turn on the flag since it is our production server, the server memory is close to 250GB and the database size is close to 1TB.

Thanks for any input.

Lijun

Did anyone use trace flag 2551 before? It claims a full-filtred memory dump will be generated on fatal errors.

Does anyone know how big the dump files are compare to the size of the server memory? I am hesitating to turn on the flag since it is our production server, the server memory is close to 250GB and the database size is close to 1TB.

Thanks for any input.

Lijun

Why you want to create memory dump any specific requirement ?

Its said by Microsoft that Use this trace flag under guidance of MS employee.I have personally not used it but below link has couple of more methods to generate dump.

How to create dump of SQL server

But please tell the reason

Go check out this link, I hope you will find it very useful. (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/askjay/archive/2010/02/05/how-can-i-create-a-dump-of-sql-server.aspx)

Hello,

For a full dump you should expect the size of the max server memory  if you have it configured or the size of the RAM on the computer. This is the type of dump that trace flag 2551 creates.

A filtered dump just takes 3-4 GBs of disk space.

For more information:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/psssql/archive/2012/03/15/intro-to-debugging-a-memory-dump.aspx

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Alberto Morillo
SQLCoffee.com

• Edited by Alberto MorilloMVP, Moderator 15 hours 53 minutes ago

Why you want to create memory dump any specific requirement ?

One of our stored procedures triggered fatal error and produce mini dump. The but error could not be reproduced. Microsoft support suggest we turn on 2551 to get more info.

Why you want to create memory dump any specific requirement ?

One of our stored procedures triggered fatal error and produce mini dump. The but error could not be reproduced. Microsoft support suggest we turn on 2551 to get more info.

Hello,

My next question would be is your SQL server patched to latest Service pack.What is output of select @@Version.

You cannot directly analyze dumps you need tool for that and also to analyze dumps you need ti have prior experience with that .IMO best person to look after that dump is Microsoft employee and that can be done by opening case with MS.But before that if by applying latest SP that can subside why shed extra bucks.What does your proc do.

I would suggest not to enable trace flag 2551.Hold your horses.

Yes. Our server is patched with the latest version. CU9 after SP1, 11.0.3412.0.

Yes. Our server is patched with the latest version. CU9 after SP1, 11.0.3412.0.

Good can you post the procedure code here.

Filtered dump = Full Dump - Data/index Pages.

So you can look at Total Server Memory counter and reduce (number of pages) * 8 K as shown in sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors

Note, this is just a rough calculation. As Alberto said.. somewhere around 3 GB.