jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed Oct 6 11:23:28 CDT 2010
I have never had more than 4 cores at my disposal. On the old (SQL) server I had two cores dedicated to SQL Server. On the new system I currently have 8 cores total and 6 of those dedicated to SQL Server. In the past I would do things like build a multi-field index on a 50 million record table and it would max out the two cores. I pretty much couldn't do anything else. Today I am building multi-field indexes on an "off-line" copy of my database from hell. Task manager tells me it is using about 40% of the total processor power, however the two cores dedicated to the system are not doing much. The other 6 cores are chugging away somewhere (visually) just under 50%. I needed to BCP (using the internal export wizard) about 30 million PKs and email addresses to a csv file. When I started that running, Task manager informed me that I was using just under 60% of the available processor power, but the first two cores (dedicated to Windows) started chugging away, presumably doing file IO and the like. My 6 SQL Server cores jumped up to around 65%. BTW, the export process ripped it out pretty darned fast. I didn't time it but the total took a minute or so. So I was able to get two tasks going, and still had plenty of horsepower left over. I then installed the 64 bit WinRar, which can use multiple threads, and had it compress the resulting text file as SQL Server continued building indexes. All very smooth. If I get no "bandwidth complaints", I will continue to post occasional emails regarding how long it takes to do stuff vs the old server. -- John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com