Is it important to release memory back to the server? I have a SQL Server 2008 R2 instance running on a production system. I'm not a DBA; I'm more a developer, but my client is currently asking me: How important is it to release memory from SQL Server back to the server? Would it impact the performance of subsequent queries to the instance if we released memory back to the OS?
How exactly would you 'release' the memory back?

As a general rule SQL Server will steal all the memory from the OS and then use it for it's own purpose. See Dynamic Memory Management:


  The default memory management behavior of the Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine is to acquire as much memory as it needs... The instance then continues to acquire memory as needed to support the workload. As more users connect and run queries, SQL Server acquires the additional physical memory on demand. A SQL Server instance continues to acquire physical memory until it either reaches its max server memory allocation target or Windows indicates there is no longer an excess of free memory;