SQL 2012 - Any tips

[SoftComSC]

Hello,

I know that 2012 isnt on the matrix of supported software yet, but necessity sometimes get the better of an IT department.

So Ive deployed an SQL 2012 Server on my 4.1 platform (im in the palnning to deploy 5.1 stage), and its working fine, except one peculiarity. Ive given the machine 8 cores, and even though SQL states that it should use all available CPU's, theres only ever load on 4 of them the rest idles away. License wise I am covered for the 8 cores so that isnt a problem. any ideas as to what I should look into to getting SQL to use the remaining 4 cores aswell ?

Thanks,

[a_p_]

Ive given the machine 8 cores

Only a guess. How did you configure these in the VM's settinges? Did you assign 8 single core vCPUs or did you split them into virtual multi-core vCPUs (e.g. 2 quad-core vCPUs)? Maybe there's an issue with the guest OS not recognizing 8 single core vCPUs!?

André

[SoftComSC]

the machine was just given 8 Vcpu's as that was what was available to it. the OS is 2008R2 DataCenter and it sees the 8 Cpu's inside windows, is there another way in 4.1 to hand out cpu ressources ?

[a_p_]

Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise and Datacenter support 8/64 sockets, so this should not be the issue.

... is there another way in 4.1 to hand out cpu ressources ?

Yes, you can split the number of configured vCPUs into virtual multi-core sockets (the only difference is how the vCPUs are presented to the guest OS). Consider a guest OS which only supports 4 sockets, but you want/need to assign 8 vCPUs. For this case VMware added the option (as of 5.x it's available in the GUI) to add an advanced setting "cpuid.coresPerSocket" to the VM's configuration parameters. Setting the vCPU count to 8 and cpuid.coresPerSocket to 4 would result in 2 quad-core CPUs presented to the guest OS. see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010184 for details

André