Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Resource Governor primer

Managing workloads and consumption with Resource Governor

Resource Governor is a new feature and one of the most anticipated management features in SQL Server 2008. It bolsters SQL Server performance by allowing DBAs to establish resource limits and priorities on processor and memory-related workloads and resource pools. By defining resource limits on resource consumption, it is possible to prioritize multiple workloads in order to ensure consistent performance and maximize the experience of the end users and the efficiency of the applications without degradation.

It is important to realize from the start that Resource Governor will only throttle processes if SQL Server is experiencing CPU or memory pressure, and it will only throttle incoming requests. For example, a process that consumes high CPU will not be throttled, but the next process may be throttled. Resource Governor is unable to throttle high I/O consumers (processes that read and write excessively from disk) in the SQL Server 2008 release, but this is planned for a future release.