Get this, we've finally gotten some new hardware for our incredibly busy Central Administration Site (CAS) in SCCM but it includes a server that is a 32-CPU box! Well, I guess to be more specific it's 32-CORES. I don't know if they're 4x8 or 8x4 and I guess it doesn't really matter to me. The cost is nuts either way.
The server will also have 256GB of RAM and tons of multi-path, top tier SAN LUNs so memory and disk I/O shouldn't be an issue. But we'll keep an eye on it. We can fit 2TB of RAM in that box if it came to it <alien drool>
So, the question is...are there any special considerations when configuring SQL 2012 on a 32-CPU box to make the most of that hardware?
Things I'm mulling over:
MAXDOP
The last I heard, even if you have more than 8 processors, you still set MAXDOP to only 8 otherwise you end up with too much context switching when the OS is managing that many work queues. Is that still valid with SQL 2012 on a 32-CPU box or is there
a more complicated answer when you go that high?
ENTERPRISE EDITION
Obviously, we were planning to stay with Enterprise Edition to handle those many CPUs...but what about BI edition? I do intend to possibly do some BI work off it someday as well since the CAS on SCCM is really intended to be the central
reporting and administration server for the enterprise in CM12. Are there any restrictions on how SQL behaves in BI edition or BI behaves in Enterprise edition that would cause me to want one over the other?
DB FILES
We're going to have gobs and gobs of space on multi-path, top tier SAN LUNs (multiple LUNs, mulitple cache, multiple paths, movable workloads) so disk I/O shouldn't be an issue of the SAN folks deliver on what they're promising. With
that in mind, I have had great luck for the last 4-5 years by setting up 1 data file per CPU and 1 tempDB data file per CPU on my 8-way boxes. So 8 data files in the user DB and 8 data files in the tempDB, spread across multiple LUNS
to remove disk contention. So, does the discussion of the number of data files get murky with 32 CPUs? I wouldn't think 32 data files is really beneficial...or is it? Again, with an absence of disk I/O contention, what would
give us the best utilization of the CPUs and RAM and SAN? If they're ponying up for this kind of hardware, I don't want some lame bottleneck making this thing look like it's sitting there idle all day.
POWER MANAGEMENT
I believe it's a pretty common practice in most places to set power management to PERFORMANCE or FULL POWER or TURBO or whatever in order to not take a bath on the CPU stepping. I intended to keep that practice alive, unless there's something
new with Server 2012 and SQL 2012 that would eliminate that benefit?
OTHERS?
Perhaps there's something else that I'm missing which a person needs to consider when trying to get the most out of a gynormous server...maybe BIOS settings that are relevant or some SQL trace flags?
I'm open to any ideas. I just really haven't had to scale that far beyond 8 way boxes before.
Number2 - (John Nelson)
Microsoft MVP (2009) - System Center Configuration Manager
http://number2blog.com