Q. I have an Exchange Server 2003 server that runs on Windows Server 2003 and has more than 1GB of memory. What settings should I add to the boot.ini file to optimize virtual-memory usage?

A. On pre-Windows 2003 systems that have more than 1GB of memory, it was common to add the /3GB setting to the boot.ini file to optimize Exchange Information Store virtual memory usage. On a Windows 2003 system, you must specify an additional setting in boot.ini: /USERVA=3030. The /USERVA=3030 setting splits the virtual memory allocation between user mode and kernel mode. This memory allocation lets Exchange allocate an additional 40MB of memory to the kernel for page table entries, which improves an Exchange 2003 server's scalability. The following sample boot.ini entry shows the use of the /3GB and /USERVA=3030 settings:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows Server 2003"/fastdetect/3GB /USERVA=3030

(The listing is shown on three lines because of space constraints.)