XADM: The Extensible Storage Engine Database Engine Contributes to Virtual Memory Fragmentation

Exchange 2000 Server, like many large scale programs, may experience virtual memory (VM) fragmentation. Over time, the server may not perform well, and you may not be able to mount storage groups because of VM fragmentation.

When an Exchange 2000 server reaches a point at which no contiguous blocks of virtual memory that are larger than 16 megabytes (MB) exist in the process, the following error message is logged:

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Component: Information store The English version of this fix has the file attributes (or later) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in coordinated universal time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time tool in Control Panel.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server. This problem was first corrected in Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Service Pack 3.

This fix is a code enhancement to the Exchange 2000 information store and ESE database engine. This fix adjusts the behavior of memory allocations. With this enhancement, ESE tries to allocate objects from higher memory locations to try to preserve large contiguous blocks of memory.

This fix was developed to address the contributing factors of the ESE database engine to Virtual Memory fragmentation inside the Information Store process. The error message may occur because of other circumstances leading to virtual memory fragmentation or memory leak. If the problem persists after you obtain this fix, further research may be required.