Recently I was performing an OS upgrade on one of our DB servers, moving from Server 2003 to Server 2008. The DBMS is SQL Server 2005. While reinstalling SQL on the new Windows installation, I went to another of our DB servers to verify a couple of settings.

Now, I always thought this second server was Server 2003 x64 + SQL 2005 x64 (from what I'd been told), but I now have my doubts about this. I now suspect that it is in fact only 32 bit SQL, however I'd like to verify this.

Here's some details:

The OS is definitely 64 bit.

xp_msver shows Platform as NT INTEL X86

SELECT @@VERSION shows Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.4035.00 (Intel X86)...

However sqlservr.exe is not shown with '* 32' in taskmgr, does anyone know why this is the case, if it is in fact 32 bit as claimed? Despite this, it does seem to be running out of the x86 program files folder.

If I do the same checks on a confirmed 64 bit installation, it does give back the expected 64 bit readings, which can only prove that this server in question is only running in 32 bit.

Now, that being the case, the question arises about how much memory this '32 bit' install can use. Task manager reports about 3.5GB memory usage for sqlservr.exe (The server has 16GB physical). I suspect that AWE has not been configured at all, and therefore the server will be significantly under-utilised (remembering that the OS is 64 bit) if SQL is simply using a 32bit address space.

Is this assumption correct?

I feel the server should have SQL reinstalled as 64 bit in order to fully utilise the hardware platform, however it is currently heavily in production; this will be no easy task. I suspect we may just have to configure AWE correctly and let it be for the time being (Unless this is a bad idea?).

I apologise that this question is a little vague/lost; I'm no SQL expert, just trying to get a handle on what's going on here.