When SQL Server goes OOM, it's often because the system can't free memory quickly enough, not that there is literally not enough memory to continue operating. S

When SQL Server goes OOM, it's often because the system can't free memory quickly enough, not that there is literally not enough memory to continue operating. Sure, it could be more aggressive with freeing memory, but at some point it just makes more sense to restart the entire system so that overall performance doesn't nosedive.