SQL Server Resource Governor: Controlling Workload

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The SQL Server Resource Governor is a feature that allows database administrators to manage SQL Server workload and system resource consumption. Resource Governor permits you to specify limits on the amount of CPU, physical IO, and memory that incoming application requests can use.

In this post, we’re going to introduce you how to handle workload effectively using Resource Governor. Here we go!

Step 1: Enable the Resource Governor

The first step is to enable Resource Governor in your SQL Server instance, since it is disabled by default. This is done using the ‘ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR RECONFIGURE’ command. Below is the required SQL code:

Step 2: Create Resource Pools

The next thing that we need to do is create resource pools. These are used to group the workload and to set the limits on the amount of system resources that the workloads can use. You can create a pool using the ‘CREATE RESOURCE POOL’ command:

The above script creates two resource pools: FastCPUPool and SlowCPUPool. FastCPUPool can consume up to 70% of CPU while SlowCPUPool can use no more than 30%.

Step 3: Create Workload Groups

Now, we need to classify the SQL Server connections into distinct workload groups. We can do this using the ‘CREATE WORKLOAD GROUP’ statement:

Here, we have two workload groups ‘FastGroup’ and ‘SlowGroup’ that are using ‘FastCPUPool’ and ‘SlowCPUPool’ respectively.

Step 4: Create Classifier Function

The classifier function is a function that you define to route incoming connections to the appropriate workload group. Here is an example:

Step 5: Registering the Classifier Function

Last but not least, you need to register the classifier function with SQL Server Resource Governor using the ‘ALTER RESOURCE GOVERNOR’ command:

With this setup, a user login by ‘FastUser’ will be routed to FastGroup, while any other connections will be directed to SlowGroup. The Resource Governor then applies the corresponding resource limits as per the group’s resource pool.

These are only basic implementations of SQL Server Resource Governor. Remember that Resource Governor offers a high degree of flexibility and customizability beyond this application.

Conclusion

By properly using Resource Governor, organizations can ensure that their resources are allotted efficiently, preventing runaway queries from overtaking system resources and causing system slowness, and allowing you to reserve resources for necessary tasks.

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