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A short note on this MDS error message and one of the possible causes.

This error appeared suddenly on all Silverlight pages in SQL Server Master Data (MDS) when I was working on a MDS project. The Explorer and Integration pages are Silverlight based so I couldn’t access them. Other pages were ok.

This error coincided with an error in the Application Event log on the server:

[red_box]Memory gates checking failed because the free memory (1649008640 bytes) is less than 5% of total memory. As a result, the service will not be available for incoming requests. To resolve this, either reduce the load on the machine or adjust the value of minFreeMemoryPercentageToActivateService on the serviceHostingEnvironment config element.. —> System.InsufficientMemoryException: Memory gates checking failed because the free memory (1649008640 bytes) is less than 5% of total memory. As a result, the service will not be available for incoming requests. To resolve this, either reduce the load on the machine or adjust the value of minFreeMemoryPercentageToActivateService on the serviceHostingEnvironment config element.[/red_box]

My machine had 32 GB memory, and I had set SQL Server to limit its memory use to 28 GB of those. After limiting SQL Servers memory use further, the Silverlight pages in MDS started working. I think this serves as a lesson not to put web server components on a database server. Put the MDS web server parts on another server, or alternatively limit SQL Server max memory further. Yet another alternative would be to limit the value of minFreeMemoryPercentageToActivateService on the serviceHostingEnvironment config element, as the above error suggests.