Template Script

Configuring SQL Server repeatedly can take up a lot of time. Here’s a script I use to configure SQL Server instances after installing.

Physical Memory

For my purposes, keeping RAM maxed out from the default installation slows down the server when things get busy, so here are my guidelines:

• For servers with 20GB RAM or more: 8GB for Operating System, and the rest for SQL Server
• For servers between 16GB to 20GB: 4GB for Operating System, the rest of SQL Server
• Otherwise, for all other configurations, split memory between the operating system and SQL Server evenly.

Cost Threshold for Parallelism

Set this value to 50 if unsure. For .NET C# applications I’ve worked with 43 worked best. Test by starting at 50 and go up/down by 3 to see what values gives the best performance.

Max Degree Parallelism

Set this number to be same as the number of logical processors on the system, but cap this at 8.