PRB: Analysis Services Runs Out of Memory While Processing (300047)

SYMPTOMS

While processing a cube or cube partition, the following error message may be received:

[The server computer is running low on memory. Close some applications..]

The Windows NT Application Event Log may also contain one or more of the following messages:

Unexpected fatal error occurred. Attempting to restart server.

The server is out of memory.

CAUSE

OLAP Server version 7.0 loads all dimensions, with all members and levels, into volatile memory before processing. Analysis Server version 8.0 loads all dimensions for all databases into volatile memory on startup. During processing on both versions, the server consumes additional memory to process updates to dimensions and cubes.

RESOLUTION

You can work around this problem in the following ways:

After processing dimensions (particularly very large dimensions), there may be some benefit to stopping and then restarting the OLAP server before processing cubes. This eliminates any memory fragmentation that may have occurred during processing.
Reduce the Process Buffer Size setting of the server. Note that the process buffer size should not be set to a value less than the default setting of 4 MB.
Using Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 Enterprise Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Microsoft Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, enable application memory tuning and then enable the OLAP Server to use 3 GB of RAM. For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
295443 INF: How To Enable Analysis Server to Use 3 GB of RAM
Increase the paging file size or create a second page file.

If the dimensions are very large, it may be necessary to do the following:

Reduce the size of the dimension as follows:
1. Convert the dimension keys to integers.
2. Eliminate any unnecessary redundant data elements.
3. Delete or reduce the number of member properties used in dimensions.
Convert to ROLAP storage.