SQL Server:Buffer Node object

Applies to: SQL Server

The Buffer Node object provides counters that complement counters provided by the Buffer Manager object. It allows you to monitor the SQL Server buffer pool page distribution for each non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node. There is an instance of the Buffer Node object for each NUMA node in use. On non-NUMA architecture, there will be a single instance of the Buffer Node object.

Buffer Node Performance Objects

This table describes the SQL Server Buffer Node performance objects.

SQL Server Buffer Node counters Description
Database pages Indicates the number of pages in the buffer pool on this node with database content.
Local node page lookups/sec Indicates the number of lookup requests from this node that were satisfied from this node.
Page life expectancy Indicates the minimum number of seconds a page stays in the buffer pool on this node without references.
Remote node page lookups/sec Indicates the number of lookup requests from this node that were satisfied from other nodes.

If SQL Server is running on non-NUMA hardware, the counters of Buffer Node and Buffer Manager objects should match.

On NUMA hardware, sums of respective counters of all Buffer Nodes should match their counterparts of Buffer Manager.

Note

The counter values and sums might not match precisely due to the dynamic nature of the counters and the sampling accuracy.

Example

You begin to explore the query performance counters in this object using this T-SQL query on the sys.dm_os_performance_counters dynamic management view:

SELECT * FROM sys.dm_os_performance_counters
WHERE object_name LIKE '%Buffer Node%';