Yes, you have 12 cores idle.

The problem is in the number of sockets. For some reason, the VM host is exposing the cores to the VM as 16...

You're using 4 out of the 16 cores. Probably because that's SQL Server Express, which is limited to 4 cores.
What's the very first (oldest) entry in the error log?

Keep in mind that the application name (via App_Name()) can be trivially spoofed, as it's specified by the client.

What's the total size of those 65 million rows?       

Log file doesn't have to be on a separate drive for In-Memory OLTP. I've had successful tests with...

The limit is that the data must fit into memory. What's the total size of those 65 million rows?

At my current company, leaving your laptop unlocked will result in a message being posted to the internal Slack channel, usually saying something like "I don't understand security". In the...

No, and even if you could, blocking those won't do a thing to prevent SQL Injection. or minimise its impact.

There's no need to recompile. Procedures' plans are cached in memory only, and so cannot survive a server upgrade (they don't even survive a reboot).

2014 has a new...

Tune your queries to use less CPU.
https://www.simple-talk.com/sql/performance/finding-the-causes-of-poor-performance-in-sql-server-part-1/
Article's a tad out of date these days, use Extended Events not Profiler. Methodology's the same though.

And don't...

DevOps isn't a job! Any company that thinks 'devops' is a title for someone has rather missed the point of the entire thing.

Firstly 'It's not my problem, it's Bob's', is a terrible way of dealing with anything. I would far rather work with someone who takes responsibility even when it's not their...