Set the MAXDOP setting to 8?

  • We are running a Dynamics AX production on SQL Server 2008 R2, recently one of Microsoft consultants tested our production and suggested to set Max degree of parallelism option to 8, But Microsoft Dynamics AX Best Practice suggests Parallelism to 1! (Planning database configuration for Microsoft Dynamics AX.pdf)

    AX database is running on a dedicated server with 2 Physical processors (Xeon E-7) with 8 cores each.

    I am confused with these two options. If I set as 1, then Database cannot use full power of multi-processing!

    Please suggest best configuration settings for Dynamic AX SQL server 2008 R2 Production.

  • What version of AX are you running 2009? 2012? Have you recently done an upgrade? Do you run AX batch processing or any types of AX or database maintenance regulary?

  • We are using AX 2009 with two AOS (Less than 500 users) on SQL Server 2008 R2.

    Right now we are only doing AX based Maintenance (Periodic Cleaning, Reindex using AX wizards).

    I am planning to create sql server periodic maintenance plans (Index rebuild, DBCC CheckDB, STAT Update etc.).

    Suggestions are welcome

  • Then as you are doing regular maintenance 8 will probably be the better option.

    If you read just on to the next paragraph it details what MAXDOP to use for upgrades, maintenance etc.

    What you could do is set MAXDOP to 1 during the normal operational hours, then set it to 8 in your maintenance window and switch it back to 1 after its completed

    The max degree of parallelism option is a setting that affects the entire instance of SQL Server. Microsoft Dynamics AX workloads generally perform better when intra-query parallelism is disabled. However, the upgrade process benefits from parallelism, as do activities that are used exclusively for batch jobs or maintenance. Use the following settings when the system performs maintenance activities or an upgrade:

    Before an upgrade to a new release of Microsoft Dynamics AX, or before a large number of maintenance or batch activities, set max degree of parallelism to the smallest of the following values:

    8

    The number of physical processor cores

    The number of physical processor cores per non-uniform memory access (NUMA) node

    When the Microsoft Dynamics AX database is used in a production environment, set max degree of parallelism to 1.

  • Best Practice for a Production Environment suggests a value of 1. Just remember that if you change the Max DOP to 8 for maintenance then the plan cache shall be flushed, so be careful if you decide to do this.

Viewing 5 posts - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply