The Problem

Your customer has a huge database with many gigabytes of data. The customer needs fast random access to their data. Unfortunately, because RAM for the database server process is limited to 2 gigabytes (or 3 gigabytes in certain circumstances) there is a hard limit on how much data your database server can keep in RAM at any one time. This results in a general slow down of the system even though more physical RAM is or can be made available and your customer is unhappy.

The Solution

Use NexusDB Server AWE edition. This edition is a normal win-32 executable that runs on any recent Windows OS. When present in the OS, it will make use of AWE (address windowing extensions) APIs that allow the process to access all the RAM in the machine. You could for instance run NexusDB Server AWE edition on a 16 gigabytes RAM, 8 core server, and dedicate 12 gigabytes of RAM to the database server. Your customer will be able to make full use of their powerful hardware.

The best part of the NexusDB Serer AWE edition is that it is a drop-in replacement for our normal NexusDB Database Server. You do not have to change your NexusDB client applications; all you need to do is have your client install the AWE edition of the server.

Licensing of the NexusDB Server AWE edition is per machine. This model has been chosen so that you, the developer, can recoup the cost of the license from your client, or even to allow the client to upgrade the backend of your application on their own.

What are the RAM & CPU Limitations

The NexusDB AWE Server has been successfully in use with 16 GB memory in real life operations in a call center for more than a year. Due to limitations in our test hardware we couldn't yet run the proof for any higher amounts of memory but we don't see a reason why it shouldn't work.

For an up to date reference on RAM limitations please take a look at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778(VS.85).aspx