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 Resource_Semaphore WAITs

Author  Topic 

TJTodd
Starting Member

10 Posts

Posted - 2011-02-24 : 12:56:48
We had a situation where there were many processes getting very long WAITs of type "RESOURCE_SEMAPHORE". I tried querying the DMV sys.dm_exec_query_memory_grants and expected to find the session(s) responsible for the problem.

Usually when we have a problem with widespread waits of this type, I could query this DMV and see:
a) at least one process that has been granted a large amount of memory (in the Granted_Memory_KB column), and
b) many processes with a NULL value of Granted_Memory_KB. I actually join to some other DMVs and see that these are all WAITing on Resource_Semaphore

Question is - why would I see all these processes showing up as Waiting for Resource_Semaphore but I don't see any process in sys.dm_exec_query_memory_grants that shows it's consuming memory? If there's not a large memory grant that has occurred, then why is everyone waiting?

Thanks in advance,
Tom
   

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