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In my experience, all Microsoft products need to be restarted regularly to keep the memory allocation healthy.

But I always think it is an unofficial practice until I see this article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj219572(v=office.15).aspx It said "To manage memory resource allocation, a developer can shut down any services that are not used, or they can periodically restart SQL Server. "

Although the suggestion is for development, I think it is also helpful for production enviornment if I can manage the restart at non-office hour.

What do you think?

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  • Memory & resource management on SQL server is a skill, it takes an understanding of the workload and user base to configure it properly. Once done appropriately, shutting down SQL should be a very rare occurence.
    – Paul Leigh
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 7:25

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In my opinion, it is a good practice if you can afford it, but it is not strictly necessary. I mean:

  • If you are using SQL Server with SharePoint, you should stop SharePoint services first. That WILL have a performance impact.

  • If you have a timeslot allowed for maintenance, reboot the machine once a month or every 2 months. Adjust this frequency along time by checking server health before a reboot. Probably the OS patch install frequency will be higher, so you will be obliged to reboot because of this more frequently.

  • On a production server, restart sql server out of this schedule only if you are facing issues.

  • Set the maximum amount of memory to sql server to [server RAM] - 4Gb (supposing you have at least 8Gb of RAM. Anyway, limit the amount of RAM available to SQL Server so the OS has space to breath).

As an example, we have SQL Servers with SharePoint 2010 farms not being rebooted in months, and still they are the most robust component of the farm. (SQL 2008 and 2008R2). I guess that latest releases are quite robust.

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  • You say it's a good practice, but don't say why. SQL has data in cache based on the queries that have been run. Is there some benefit to clearing out that cache? If rebooting once a month is good, is twice a month better?
    – Mike2500
    Commented Mar 11, 2014 at 14:50
  • In my opinion, it is a good practice because some things get solved. E.g. that transaction log that does not get shrunk even just after a backup. However in my experience, the need for reboot comes more frequently because of the OS more than SQL Server itself. I agree that rebooting the instance has a performance hit, that's granted. However, choosing the right frequency is the 1M$ question. It depends so much on how a specific platform is being used (and that includes how often you install OS patches, how the platform is holding its load...). That's why put in bold "if you can afford it"
    – Roberto
    Commented Mar 14, 2014 at 10:39
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This Article explains Sql Server Database maintenance.have a look at it

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