Resource Governor is a new technology in SQL Server 2008 that enables differentiation of workloads and allocation of shared resources such as CPU and memory. It uses workload groups to classify incoming connections and assign them to resource pools that limit resource consumption. This allows setting workload priority and ensuring business critical applications get the resources they need without being disturbed by other applications. Resource utilization can be monitored using performance monitor counters and DMVs.

1. Dinesh Asanka
Database Specialist
Pearson Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.
http://twitter.com/dineshasanka
http://www.dbfriend.net/
dinesha@ecollege.com
RESOURCE GOVERNOR TO
CONTROL RESOURCE
UTILIZATION

2. Forum Post
• My SQL Server is accessed by several end user applications.
• When all the applications are in action my server performance is
bad.
• Some of those applications are business critical hence they should
not be disturbed by other application.
• How to allocate specific hardware resources for these business
critical applications?

3. What are your solutions for this?
• Move relevant databases to a different server.
• You can use SQL Server techniques like Mirroring, Log shipping,
Database Snapshot and Replication.

4. What We Want Is,

5. What is Resource Governor
• Resource Governor is a new technology in SQL Server 2008.
• Resource Governor enables you to differentiate these workloads
and allocate shared resources as they are requested, based on the
limits that you specify.
• Resource Governor is a quota system for SQL Server Resource.
• These resources are CPU and memory.

6. Types of Resource Issues
• “Non-Ending” queries.
• Unpredictable work loads.
• Limiting the CPU usage by backup jobs using backup compression.
• Setting workload priority.

7. RESOURCE
GOVERNOR
CONCEPTS

8. Workload Groups
• Way of grouping loads by tasks, connections
• Assigned to a specific resource pool
• Internal tasks are part of internal Workload Group.
• e.g. Checkpoint, Ghost Cleanup
• Internal groups do not have any limits and can over turn other groups
regardless of their limits.
• Default group for the behavior of no resource governor running and will
over turn by other groups.

9. Workload Groups Options
Option Description Default
IMPORTANCE
Importance between workload
groups using the same
resource pool.
MEDIUM
REQUEST_MAX_MEMORY_GRANT_PERCENT
Max memory grant from the
resource pool for query
execution.
25%
REQUEST_MEMORY_GRANT_TIMEOUT_SEC
How long to wait for a query
execution memory grant .
0
REQUEST_MAX_CPU_TIME_SEC
Max amount of CPU time a
request can use
0
MAX_DOP Max degree of parallelism. 0
GROUP_MAX_REQUESTS
Maximum concurrent requests
per group.
0

10. Classification
• Incoming connection are classified into Workload Groups.
• T-SQL function
• HOST_NAME, APP_NAME, SUSER_NAME, IS_MEMBER,
CONNECTIONPROPERTY are the system functions we can used.

11. Resource Pools
• A resource pool is to limit resource consumption for one or more
workload groups.
Option Default
MIN_CPU_PERCENT 0
MAX_CPU_PERCENT 100
MIN_MEMORY_PERCENT 0
MAX_MEMORY_PERCENT 100
• Default and internal pools has the above values which cannot be
altered.
• Number of pools should be less than 20

12. Source: MSDN

13. RESOURCE GOVERNER

14. Monitoring
• Perfmon
• SQLServer: Resource Pool Stats
• SQLServer:Workload Group Stats
• DMVs
• sys.dm_resource_governor_configuration
• sys.dm_resource_governor_workload_groups
• sys.dm_resource_governor_resource_pools
• Modified DMVS
• sys.dm_exec_requests
• sys.dm_os_memory_brokers

15. New in Denali
• Support for 64 resource pools
• Enhanced CPU usage controls
• Enhanced resource allocation

16. My Field Notes
• Alter large table with 150 millions rows without effecting current
load.
• One Column was changed varchar(8000) to nvarchar(max).
• Another Column was change to text to varchar(max)
• High CPU due to page splits and conversion took 7-8 hrs.

17. PN
• Resource Governor does not impose any controls on a dedicated
administrator connection aka DAC.

18. Limitations
• Resource management is limited to the SQL Server Database
Engine.
• There is limited workload monitoring or workload management
between SQL Server instances.
• Limit specification applies to CPU bandwidth and memory
managed by SQL Server.
• Resource Governor is available only on the Enterprise, Developer,
and Evaluation editions of SQL Server.

19. QUESTIONS &
ANSWERS

20. Resources
• http://www.sql-server-performance.com/2008/resource-governor-
in-sql-server-2008/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb933866.aspx